Sunday, 5 June 2011

NYRB on Buster Keaton

The logic of his first pictures, the two-reel pictures, resembles the logic of dreams. It was an alternate reality that freed him from narrative obligations - one thing simply followed another - and allowed him to pack a staggering quantity of life's particulars into each twenty-minute film......Keaton's dreams and dream-like camera effects seem to compound the stillness and inwardness of his deadpan character. They are not a break from reality but a truer form of it.

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