The house that buster built.

AuthorGehring, Wes D.
PositionREEL WORLD - Comedy

ACCORDING TO JAMES AGEE'S 1949 essay in LIFE magazine, "Comedy's Greatest Era," the four pantheon figures of the 1920s were Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Harry Langdon, and Buster Keaton. During that silent-film decade, there is no question that Chaplin was the greatest personality comedian and overall auteur (writing, directing, producing, and starring in his Tramp films). However, since Chaplin allowed years to pass between his movies, the prolific Lloyd and his inventive gag team, mixed with the comedian's timely 1920s go-getter persona, made him the decade's comedy box office king.

Langdon's inclusion among Agee's iconic group is somewhat tangential, given it is largely based upon just three 1926-27 features: "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp," "The Strong Man" (both 1926), and "Long Pants" (1927). There is no denying the whimsical appeal of his wide-eyed man child, whose only ally seems to be a deus ex machina ending. Yet, this popular trio of features were influenced heavily by Frank Capra, who assisted in their writing and direction. Once Langdon severed his ties with Capra, he lost favor with 1920s audiences. Indeed, his feature film career essentially was over even before the coming of sound.

Keaton, however, is the wild card in this quartet. Like Lloyd, Keaton made 12 features during the 1920s, but the pictures did not find the universal critical and commercial success of Lloyd's work. The latter's still-entertaining all-American hero remains tied to that period, while Keaton's otherworldly persona and minimalist "Great Stone Face" belong to the past present, and future, such as his Sisyphus-like fate of endless walking on a riverboat paddlewheel in the short subject "Day Dreams" (1922).

Keaton's world of surrealism meets existentialism is full of these Kafkaesque images, such as the ability to enter a projected film within his film ("Sherlock Jr.," 1924); miss a major Civil War battle backdrop as he chops wood on his otherwise empty train ("The General," 1926); win the girl, only to close with a series of dissolves showing the unhappy marriage to follow ("College," 1927); and find himself walking into a nightmarish cyclone at a 60-degree angle ("Steamboat Bill Jr.," 1928). It is, as critic David Thomson once observed, "Keaton instructing Franz Kafka on the pitiless futility of taking sides in life."

While Lloyd and Langdon are exceptional comedians, they do not transcend their era in the unique manner of Keaton and Chaplin. Indeed, Keaton's...

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