Shawn Hall None of the limitations of the silent screen then, seemed limitations to its comedians. Rather, they seemed opportunities for slipping ever more elaborately through the cogs of the cosmic machinery, escaping the indignities of a dimensional, hostile universe… The fantasy born of silence was simply one more gift dropped into the laps of men determined to outwit reality.
–The Silent Clowns, Walter Kerr. (1975)
Journalist Walter Kerr’s 1975 exploration of silent comedy is a seminal work that somehow manages to dissect the magic of silent screen comedy without killing the fun. Written for a more general audience than today’s typical academic writing, The Silent Clowns remains chock-full of profoundly insightful viewpoints and analyses today as it was when first published over 50 years ago.
Kerr, while fond of many of the silent era’s masterful comedians, named Keaton as his favorite, devoting eight whole chapters to dissecting Keaton’s silent filmography. The attention to detail he exhibits in handling Keaton’s career development and attitude towards screen comedy proves his admiration of Keaton’s talent and work. Two of Kerr’s observations on Keaton have been rattling around my brain since reading that I’d like to work through in this post: Keaton’s relationship to his specific universe and his unique take on romance in his films.
Keaton’s Relationship to the Universe
Kerr singles out Keaton’s relationship to the universe as a defining trait that distinguishes him from his fellow comedians:
“Most clowns regarded the physical world as an obstacle to be overcome or evaded, by ingenuity or by grit. Keaton felt otherwise. He knew all about obstacles, of course. But treacherous as the universe might be, Keaton trusted it.”
The other clowns made it their business to fight the natural way of things. For instance, the Tramp’s chameleon nature allowed Chaplin to transform into various tradesmen or socialites depending on his situation, masquerading as something he often wasn’t to fit in or exploit a situation for his own gain. Lloyd, on the other hand, learned and grew when thrown into opposition. Finding inner courage or relying on his otherworldly positivity and determination to overcome the obstacles the universe threw at him, Lloyd sought to change the status quo to secure a future for him and his girl. Keaton learned to work within the confines of the universe, accepting his surroundings and using what he was given to the best of his abilities rather than trying to change his circumstances.
Buster tries unsuccessfully to free his guest from a hole in his newly finished roof in One Week (1920)
Sometimes Keaton’s character understands this truce with the universe, and other times it is forced upon him. Take the gag in One Week when Keaton attempts to free a visitor whose head is stuck hanging through a hole in the roof. After unsuccessfully trying to pull him out with a crowbar, Buster throws the crowbar down in frustration, bopping the man in the head and releasing him from the roof’s grasp. When Keaton tries, he fails; however, as Kerr surmises that for Keaton, “accident is more reliable than effort…Things will work out provided you plan nothing, resist nothing.”
Just as the universe can be helpful and used for Keaton’s purposes, it often punishes Buster in rather hilarious ways. Take Buster’s attempted escape from his next-door girlfriend’s angry father in Neighbors (1922). Jumping out of the third-story window when her father finds them together, Keaton rides the clothesline to her house across the fence. However, as he glides into his own home, he vaults onto the staircase’s railing, sliding down a floor and towards another open window. Shooting back out the window and across the clothesline again, he’s thrust back into his girlfriend’s house, flying through the window and knocking down the girl’s father as he is coming down the stairs. There is no escaping his fate, no matter how hard the universe must work to get him there.
Buster returns to face his punishment in Neighbors (1922)
Kerr also places Keaton’s fascination with mechanical processes into this viewpoint of Keaton’s universe. For Buster, the universe is a neutral machine. Once he understands how the universe works, he can take advantage of the natural processes to his advantage. For example, after twenty minutes of fighting against and struggling to understand the gadgets in The Electric House (1922), Buster controls the moving staircase to trick and defeat his vengeful opponent, tossing him out the window in the same way Keaton was earlier flung after unsuccessfully fighting against the viciously fast conveyor.
Keaton also frequently takes advantage of everyday objects and morphs them into whatever tool he needs at the current moment. Kerr goes so far as to say that Keaton “touches nothing unless he can make it instantly functional,” whether it’s using a bass violin as a canoe and a fiddle as a paddle in The Playhouse (1921) or making a makeshift grill with a pair of tennis rackets to cook his fish over a fire in The Balloonatic (1923). Of course, other comedians changed the function of everyday objects, but no other comedian repeated this style of gag with Buster’s mechanical eye. For instance, while Chaplin played with his food for fun with his iconic dinner roll dance in The Gold Rush (1925), Keaton monetarily solves an existential threat by repurposing his wife’s hardened pancakes in The Boat (1921) to plug a massive leak in their boat.
While a useful framework to understand Keaton’s approach to comedy over his independent career, Kerr’s analysis doesn’t neatly explain every Keaton gag and film perfectly. For example, Keaton’s surreal gags place Buster as a force unburdened by the universe’s straightforward rules. Creating a nail out of thin air in The High Sign (1921) allows Keaton to outwit physics and the universe itself rather than positioning himself strategically as a neutral force in the universe’s current to reach his desired destination. Keaton’s surreal streak was not the biggest deviation from his harmony with the universe, but instead his relationship and pursuit of his female leads.
Buster cooking fish with tennis rackets in The Ballonatic (1923)
Keaton and His Leading Ladies
Just like other numerous silent comedians, the pursuit of the girl served as the main plot of Keaton’s films. What separated him from his contemporaries was what happened when he eventually won the girl. While a final pairing might raise Chaplin up the social ladder or embolden Lloyd to find his true potential, winning the girl always threatened to rupture the equilibrium Keaton had worked reach with the universe. Walter Kerr even sees Keaton pursuing the girl as an act of self-sacrifice, stating that:
One thing more than another that…set him apart from his fellow comedians, and from the “normal ” world at large, it is his realization of what the girl could and would do to him. She would deprive him of the only security he knew, the security of rolling with the universal punch. He couldn’t have his universe and the girl both. They weren’t on speaking terms. He chose the girl, knowing exactly what he was getting into
The Navigator best shows how a woman can upend Keaton’s neutrality. After seeing newlyweds drive by in a car with a “Just Married” sign draped on a car outside his mansion one morning, Keaton announces to his valet after a silent moment of reflection, “I think I’ll get married.” This matter-of-fact declaration of romantic interest perfectly encapsulates Keaton’s acceptance of marriage as the natural order compared to the bombastic, lovestruck romances of Chaplin and especially Lloyd. The pursuit of the girl is not a defining characteristic of Buster’s character but the inciting incident that rips him away from his cushy, high-class life. And taking a car just to cross the street, this man isn’t one to shake up his natural order!
Betsy making Buster’s life more difficult than it needs to be in The Navigator (1924)
Kathryn McQuire’s Betsy, while certainly a nice girl who means Buster no harm, repeatedly proves a burden to Buster aboard the vessel. For instance, whenKeaton is about to raise a flag to signal a nearby ship to rescue them, Betsy suggests raising a bright yellow flag instead. Doing what he is told, Buster raises the yellow flag only for the incoming ship to mistake the yellow flag as a signal that their ship is quarantined and immediately turn around. When Buster throws down a ladder to rescue Betsy after falling overboard, he must dive in after her to help her start climbing. After trying to guide her up the ladder, Buster attempts to move her arms up the ladder, only for Betsy to faint, making his job that much more difficult.
It’s easy to misconstrue the Keaton leading lady as a stereotypical damsel needing a man to save her; however, her position as a foil to the neutral state of Buster’s character explains their role in Keaton’s filmography much more accurately. Kerr argues that:
The pact that Keaton has long since made with the not entirely sane universe… is a pact that no girl, no woman, can ever comprehend or agree to. Women take up arms against a sea of troubles, and so double them. Women are activists, highly rational creatures who would not think for a moment of going fishing while trouble was afoot, certainly not of standing still until a falling building fell. Instead, they do things, and the doing, alas, completely upsets the ever-so-tentative, ever-so-delicate harmony Keaton’s watchful waiting has achieved.
What he had done, in his mind’s eye, was to reverse exactly the traditional concept of the two sexes: he was the passive plaything of nature, the intuitive creature who acted— when he acted— on instinct; she was the eternal busybody with ideas bubbling in her head.
In our world, the constant thinking and proactive female leads in Keaton’s films are the ones who solve problems. In the Buster Keaton cinematic universe, their initiative upsets the universe, putting Buster in the impossible position of mediating between his uncaring universe and his very involved partner. While Buster usually finds this sacrifice worth his efforts, we understand when he prefers his previous status quo, even when that might mean prioritizing his silent bovine companion Brown Eyes over his sweetheart in the final scene of Go West (1926).
Even when Keaton plays the romance relatively straight, he often finds a way to undercut his successful union with his romantic interest. Take in College, a rather unusual cliché tale of college romance for Keaton to do. Upon marrying his sweetheart in the film’s final scene, we witness a short vignette that jumps years ahead, first dissolving to the couple with an enormous amount of children, then to the couple aged and alone, and finally a pair of gravestones spelling out THE END to close out the film.
Buster’s Happy Ever After in College (1927)
While this is the logical conclusion of their story (they definitely aren’t still alive in 2026), the bleak end contrasts with the final joy of a domestic life many romances at the time reveled in. Closing with their characters’ demise, this bleak ending robs us of the happily ever after. The girl is just one triumph for Keaton, not the whole reason for his characters’ motivations. While the girl is a nice distraction, the universe still marches on, and Keaton is unable to shift the winds of time like us all.
The old Buster, in many ways died when he got the girl, not free to remain in harmony with the universe around him except for being subsumed in the universal human experience of aging and our eventual demise. Perhaps his life became perfectly mundane, not interesting enough to warrant any screentime. Or perhaps the universe had lost interest in Buster, knowing he’s no longer at liberty to tinker with and lean into the many inexplicable wrinkles as he once had.
Much like his explanation of Keaton’s relationship with the universe, Buster’s attitude towards women was not the same throughout his work despite the recurring themes Kerr points out. At MGM, for instance, gone are the women whose good-natured spirit complicates Buster’s equilibrium even in the most mundane tasks. Marceline Day is more simply a supportive partner who perfectly complements Keaton in The Cameraman (1928). In Spite Marriage (1929), Dorothy Sebastian is a headstrong woman, while Buster comes across much more as a dolt rather than a savvy emotional outsider of his earlier films. But these exceptions work to prove the rule and represent Keaton at his best in the most inventive, creative, and independent period of his long career.
Buster’s one true love in Go West (1925)
Conclusion
Kerr’s analysis (which if you haven’t The Silent Clowns you need to add to your list IMMEDIATELY) gets to the very heart of why Buster Keaton is often called the most modern of the silent comedians. In many ways, his unpredictable universe reflects our modern perception of the world. We may not face collapsing houses or runaway trains, but our chaotic news feeds bombarding us with a never-ending deluge of brain rot and more and more outlandish world events seem just as beyond our control as the fickle universe Keaton seeks to stay in good standing with.
While other comedians, as talented as they are, reflect an idealized version of the world we’d like to live in, Buster reflects the world we do live in. And with his Great Stone Face, Buster reminds us that sometimes in the face of a crazy world out of our control, all we can do is give a blank stare of disbelief and find the best way to move ahead with whatever may come our way.
This post is a part of the 12th Annual Buster Keaton Blogathon hosted by Lea Stans of Silentology. To read more great posts celebrating Buster Keaton and his films, visit the main blogathon page.
