The Time Machine
[2020]
Programme curated by Cecilia Cenciarelli with the collaboration of Serge Bromberg e Tim Lanza
As the catalogue is about to go to press, we’re still not sure if we’ll be able to open this section with a previously unseen film: the only short co-created by Chaplin and Keaton. The working title is The Lockdowners. Fade into Charlie full of tics and washing his hands obsessively with whatever liquid is in arms’ reach. To cover his nose and mouth during the pandemic, he wears funnels, diving masks or extra-large bras. He finds any excuse to get out and takes frequent strolls with a hamster, a broom-head or a fringed lampshade on a leash. He starts hugging the walls and climbing streetlights as soon as he sees a passerby. The police constantly fine him, but he is penniless and ends up having to work in a nursing home where a gang of lively old-timers tries to escape every day. The pandemic swells the ranks of the unemployed, but death never appears in the movie since Chaplin made it while it was still happening, unaware that hundreds of thousands of people had passed away. Buster is a trainee nurse in the same care home. He wears an oversized mask that covers three-quarters of his body and dozens of rubber bands that stifle his movement and get caught on everything, but he carries on, stoic as ever. Buster suspects he has the virus, and goes into quarantine where he practises synchronised swimming and cross-country skiing in his living room. He bakes bread non-stop, but one time he uses too much yeast and the dough invades the house. Totally unaware of what’s going on outside, he designs a system of pulleys, contraptions and self-propelled machines so he can dine with the girl in the building across the street, with whom he is secretly in love. The other five sections will unveil four new restorations and take a broader perspective on Keaton’s golden age by including The Saphead (1920) and Spite Marriage (1929). These two films began and ended the 1920s, marking the rise and decline of Keaton’s career. A recent graduate of Fatty Arbuckle’s school, he was ‘loaned’ by Schenck to Metro Pictures, where he made his first feature film. In The Saphead we see the future Keaton come to life in front of our eyes, while in Spite Marriage we seem to watch him grow dim under the weight of a second troubled MGM production. Yet both films offer glimpses of his genius, which spills over to varying degrees into all the pictures in our retrospective. If you watch restored prints of The Playhouse, The Boat, The Blacksmith (in its two versions), The Balloonatic and The Love Nest one after another, they don’t appear to be minor films at all. Rather they are brilliant tiles in a mosaic that when assembled demonstrates what a gigantic artistic presence he was. We’ll continue negotiating with Buster and Charlie for The Lockdowners, but if we don’t get it, we’ll simply have to imagine it ourselves.
Cecilia Cenciarelli
Edition History
Programme curated byCecilia Cenciarelli
Our programme this year goes beyond the scope and the ‘temporal perimeter’ of the Keaton Project: 30 great, major or minor films, starring and directed by Buster Keaton (in tandem with Eddie Cline, Malcolm St. Clair, Clyde A. Bruckman, Charles Reisner…) between 1920 and 1928. In addition to the new titles restored in partnership with the Cohen Film Collection, we are presenting the complex yet essential restoration ofThe Cameraman – Keaton’s first film for MGM and his last masterpiece – the result of a recent collaboration with Warner Bros. and the Criterion Collection. For eight years Keaton had worked incessantly in an atmosphere of artistic fervour, experimentation and creative freedom. “When we made pictures,” he would say of those unique times, “we ate, slept and dreamt ’em”.
This was a freedom that Keaton clearly cherished but also never really fought for, neither at the beginning of his career – it was his staggering talent that stood out – nor during his fatal move to MGM, orchestrated by Joseph Schenck and signed in January of 1928. Keaton docilely went along with the course of events.
Everyone knows about what happened next: the alleged 22 gagmen lined up by MGM, a young and ambitious producer’s rampages on the set, a script that was difficult to develop and with too many writers, which Keaton viewed as an obstacle to his creative process. It is hard to believe that a marvel such asThe Cameraman was born in such a stifling atmosphere. Another declaration of love for cinema and ‘making cinema’ (and reflecting on the paradoxes of success), this film abounds with brilliant comic ideas and genuinely epic moments. But perhaps it’s in its very success that lay the beginning of Keaton’s downfall. In having been able to stoically overcome, just like in his films, all the obstacles on his path. Yet, in retrospect, we can feel that something is changing.“He’s not yet entirely a character in someone else’s movie, but he is no longer a drifter within his own universe,” wrote Andrew Sarris, “The Cameraman is toSteamboat Bill, Jr. whatA Night at the Opera is toDuck Soup for the Marx Brothers. In both instances, Metro-Goldwyn Mayer managed to domesticate anarchic talent for a larger and more sentimental constituency”.
So let us celebrate a still “undomesticated anarchic talent”, which permeates scenes of ghostly manifestations and an ascent to heaven inThe Haunted House (one of the many fatal abodes built by Keaton), at the family dinner inMy Wife’s Relations and his athleticfailures inCollege….
Our sincere thanks to Kevin Brownlow and Livio Jacob for reminding us of the extraordinary amateur film shot on the set ofTheCameraman; and to Serge Bromberg and Eric Lange for believing in the uniqueness of our audience and allowing us showMyWife’s Relations original ending found in the Lobster Films collection
Cecilia Cenciarelli
