Why Buster Keaton Is Today's Most Influential Actor

BBC ^ | 23rd January 2022 | Nicole Davis

[nickcarraway]

The silent-film star's deadpan style combined with his kinetic energy have inspired today's most acclaimed stars, from Oscar Isaac and Adam Driver to Awkwafina. Nicole Davis explores why the actor and filmmaker's style is still a fitting response to modern life.

Buster Keaton was something of an enigma to his own era. The silent-film star launched himself between rooftops, battled storms and sand dunes, boarded moving vehicles – and frequently trailed behind them, perfectly horizontal and as suspended as our disbelief – all in the name of comedy, and all while seeming unfazed. Film historian Peter Kramer, in his essay The Makings of a Comic Star, contends that Keaton's "deadpan performance was seen as a highly inappropriate response to the task of creating characters which were rounded and believable". His unrelenting imperturbability was misinterpreted as a lack of emotional expression, or perhaps acting skill.

Nowadays we applaud performances that exhibit this level of restraint, wowed by microscopic gestures that hint at subtext, but refuse to spell it out. As Slate's movie critic and author Dana Stevens points out in Camera Man, a new biography-meets-cultural-history about Buster Keaton and the birth of the 20th Century, "[Keaton] was ahead of his time in many ways". It is exactly this prescience and timelessness that makes Buster Keaton a figure ripe for reference in contemporary performance. His type of minimalism, stoicism and lyricism transcended the 20th Century, and can be seen on-screen now perhaps more than ever.

[IYAS9YAS]

The most amusing movie now and from a very long time is ‘The Heat’ with Sandy B and Melissa McCarthy. No CGI. Just girls going along with a hilarious director ‘oh let’s do this, this would be funny’.

Tried watching The Heat. McCarthy just comes off as trying too hard to be vulgar. Couldn't handle ten minutes of it.

[stanne]

Can’t disagree.

Can’t get through three minutes of any of her other movies.

The Heat cracks me up I think I have to work too hard to ignore the vulgarity. It’s over the top.

[plain talk]

Buster sustained many injuries from doing many of his own stunts. Years later he found out that he had sustained a neck fracture from that water tank stunt. They underestimated the force of that water. He was certainly unique.

[lee martell]

I used to get Buster K. mixed up with another actor from yesteryear: Georgie Jessel.
That same deadpan look was picked up in another generation:
Think former presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg.

[MikelTackNailer]

Toward the finale of Johnny Depp’s “The Lone Ranger” he and the director paid tremendous homage to Buster with several great stunts during a train chase. It’s a good movie unfairly trashed by critics.

[minnesota_bound]

I have not heard of any of these people:
Oscar Isaac and Adam Driver to Awkwafina.

Buster Keaton everyone knows.

Buster Keaton - The Art of the Gag
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWEjxkkB8Xs

[Bob434]

yeah he was pretty funny- did al ot of his own stunts too- he was one of hte greats, that’s for sure-

[jmacusa]

Harold Lloyd was a far better physical comedian.