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BUSTER KEATON
As Chaplin came to think of himself as an artist his films tended to take on a slower pace, their subsidiary characters a greater subtlety. Worse, as he began to lose faith in the applicability of the truth for which the Little Fellow stood, his films replaced their hard gleam of honesty with the softer glow of sentimentality. In Buster Keaton's work there was no slowness, subtlety or sentiment. Instead there was fantastic emphasis on high-speed timing; the inventiveness of his gags, which had the maniac precision of some infernal machine, are unsurpassed in film history. As for his character, it had no depth at all. It had no background, no discernible major goals and, therefore, no emotion.
Keaton, of course, is famous for his utterly dead pan. His face was a mask, hiding all emotion. The miracle was that no matter how his seemingly delicate person was assaulted he never cracked. He always pressed sternly forward, intent on just one thing — victory over the forces which, inexplicably had been loosed upon him. He was, in short, a comedian with precisely one joke in his repertory, that being his uncanny ability to take it without registering so much as surprise, let alone discouragement or disappointment with his peculiar lot. Within this arbitrary limit, however, he was marvelously inventive. One disaster led to another which in turn led to yet another still more horrid, all in a matter of seconds. We wait suspensefully for him to weep or to smile or to beg for mercy, yet he never does. He merely plods on until, at last, threatened man and machines suddenly give up their vain assault upon him, and he emerges victorious, disdaining even the victor's smile of triumph.
Keaton wins out for but one reason — his absolute unshakability. The uses of the deadpan at last become clear. It is the reverse of the petty salesman's mask against disaster — the fixed smile and false heartiness. As long as Keaton retained his expressionless aplomb he could not be reached. Had he once revealed emotion he would have presented his enemies with a chink through which they would have destroyed him. The result was a certain coldness in his screen character. But perhaps coldness — combined with determination— is the best means of survival in this world.
Buster Keaton finds himself in a typical contretemps in The Three Ages of Man, the inevitable result of sailing alone.
Plodding, implacable, he follows the antique adage, Go West, Young Man.
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