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A recent viewing of "Our Hospitality" reminds me that for Buster Keaton silent comedy was primarily mechanical.
His almost supernatural gift for pantomime was not used to convey character directly, but through his interaction with mostly
inanimate objects, or with people behaving like inanimate objects.
The introduction of his (mature) character in "Our Hospitality" is typical. We see him first in medium close-up
wearing a preposterously large period top hat. His relationship with the hat is adversarial, but in purely visual terms Not
only is the hat a violation of our expectation of the porkpie, it is a violation of the man -- an indication that he is out
of place in New York. It's not the style of the hat itself which is the problem -- Keaton could look dashing in any kind of
hat, and seems perfectly comfortable in this one. It's the exaggerated size of it which tells the tale. Later, on the train
journey, when the hat proves utterly untenable in the passenger car, he discards it for the porkpie, which is funny in itself
but also an indication that he is on his way to where he belongs.
The first shots which introduce him are followed by a sequence in which he rides an equally preposterous bicycle through
rural New York City. Here it's not a case of a man struggling against a silly machine, but of a man operating a silly machine
expertly, which makes him automatically silly. Keaton does not establish a persona which then interacts with the world, he
establishes a persona through his interaction with the world. So different from Chaplin's method. A first glance at the Little
Fellow in costume and in motion tells us exactly who he is, and makes us wonder how he and the world will interact. Keaton's
persona does not come into being except through interaction with the world.
The geographical and historical setting of "Our Hospitality" is established by similar means -- mainly by the
journey of the rickety train, easily outpaced by a dog, into the countryside. As the train's progress becomes increasingly
problematic, challenged by terrain and farm animals -- at one point even going off-road -- our place in time and on the map
is eloquently defined.
I think it was Keaton's fascination with the mechanics of things which led him to the absolute mastery of cinematic storytelling
on display in "Our Hospitality". The brilliance of the individual images, the taut, propulsive effect of the editing,
seem oddly modern. Keaton was as fascinated by the mechanical aspects of cinematic storytelling as he was by all other mechanical
processes, and this led him to a pursuit of its perfection far in advance of his time.
The convention of temporal continuity was an evolving concept in the silent era. Some viewers are surprised by Griffith's
occasional sloppiness in this regard, but in fact sloppiness has nothing to do with it. Griffith adhered to the illusion of
strict temporal continuity only when it served his dramatic purposes -- primarily in the parallel chases which he perfected.
In more lyrical moments he abandoned it -- sometimes winding time back to reprise a delicate moment in a close-up. Very few
directors of the silent era concentrated on maintaining an overwhelming illusion of temporal continuity, of the sort that
increasingly came to define the Hollywood studio style.
This illusion involved more than not repeating actions from shot to shot. It required strategies for disguising the transitions
from shot to shot -- the most basic of which is cutting on action, cutting before an action is completed. Chaplin adhered
to more or less strict temporal continuity, but he had no particular interest in emphasizing it. His shots existed to showcase
his performance, and he would never have made a cut purely in the interests of narrative propulsion, or to emphasize the illusion
of temporal continuity, if it interfered with an episode of performance.
Keaton inhabits a different world, a more modern world. The individual shots of "Our Hospitality" are consistently
stunning, plastically dynamic, with far more to them than can be taken in at a first viewing. Yet the pace of the cutting
is rigorous and relentless -- and always calculated with reference to the plastic fascination of the individual shot. Tracking
shots or wide shots of complicated evolving action can be held for long periods of time. In more static set-ups there are
inevitably cut-ins -- cuts to a closer view of the action from exactly the same camera angle.
All of this is closer to the studio style we now read as "normal" cinematic procedure than we find in most silent
films made in 1923. It's one reason Keaton's films are sometimes more accessible to modern audiences than the films of his
contemporaries. There's also something miraculous about it. Within the limits of its ambitions and methods, "Our Hospitality"
is as close to perfect as movies ever get -- as perfect as the prop machines Keaton loved to dance with on screen.
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