Buster Keaton Collection [2 Discs]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

Buster Keaton stands as one of the two most-respected silent-screen comedians in film history. Although he fell out of favor for a period of time, his films were rediscovered -- allowing Keaton to take his rightful place in film history alongside Charlie Chaplin. The Buster Keaton Collection features three of his films including the classic The Cameraman, Free and Easy, and Spite Marriage. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 2
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Pre-1954 Standard)
• Audio: Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital Mono
• Screen: Black and White
• Subtitle: English, Spanish, French
• Features:
  • cc
  • Introduction by Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne
  • Commentary on The Cameraman by Glenn Mitchell, author of "A-Z of Silent Film Comedy: An Illustrated Companion"
  • Commentary on Spite Marriage by silent-era film historians John Bengtson and Jeffrey Vance
  • Photo montages on the two silents
  • Subtitles: English, Français, & Español

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Director:

  Edward Sedgwick, Kevin Brownlow

• Producer:

  Edward Sedgwick

• Screen Story:

  Clyde Bruckman

• Screenwriter:

  Richard Schayer

• Screen Story:

  Lew Lipton

• Screenwriter:

  Ernest Pagano, Paul Dickey

• Dialogue Writer:

  Al Boasberg

• Cinematographer:

  Reggie Lanning, Elgin Lessley, Leonard Smith

• Songwriter:

  William Kernell, Roy Turk, Fred E. Ahlert

• Editor:

  Hugh Wynn, Basil Wrangell, Frank Sullivan, George Todd, William Le Vanway

• Art Director:

  Cedric Gibbons

• Costume Designer:

  David Cox

• Sound/Sound Designer:

  Douglas Shearer

• Intertitle Writer:

  Joseph Farnham, Robert Hopkins

• Choreography:

  Sammy Lee

• Technical Director:

  Fred Gabourie

• Production Supervisor:

  Lawrence Weingarten

• Continuity:

  Lew Lipton

REVIEW:

• In his first film for MGM and his last important work, Buster Keaton once again mined the comic possibilities of filmmaking. Blending studio sets with documentary footage and location shooting in New York, Keaton's adventures as a hapless yet inadvertently avant-garde Hearst newsreel man amply demonstrated his signature athleticism and visual cleverness, as he films a Tong War in Chinatown, plays baseball with himself in an empty Yankee Stadium, and gets a little too involved in Charles Lindbergh's tickertape parade. An improvised situation involving a shared Coney Island dressing room and bathing suit showcased Keaton's well-honed gifts for comic timing and unscripted creativity, but that work situation was not to last at bottom line-fixated MGM. Even though The Cameraman was a success, MGM demanded that Keaton give up his looser, off-the-cuff working style and stick to prepared shooting scripts; his penchant for dangerous stunts did not find favor either. With his comic methods curtailed after 1928, The Cameraman was the final film made exactly as Keaton wished--and, perhaps not surprisingly, his last great feature. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi