Frozen-faced silent comic

Press, 11 June 1977, Page 15

Frozen-faced silent comic

The Best of Buster. Edited by Richard J. Anobile. Hamish Hamilton. 256 pp. $8.05 (paperback), $13.45 (hardback). (Reviewed by John Wilson) Buster Keaton’s name is less wellknown than Charlie Chaplin's but they are together the geniuses of early comic movies and Keaton's name certainly deserves more attention than it gets — although Richard Anobile's championing of Keaton over Chaplin is foolish and unneessary. The screen is big enough for both of them. Keaton's comedy is similar to Chaplin's in many ways, containing an element of vaudeville and exploiting the image of a fallible innocent man struggling through a social morass he has largely created for himself. Both both are original and distinetvely their own men. The book is primarily reproductions of more than 1000 stills from Buster Keaton movies in a series of sequences. The sequences include some of Keaton’s best moments, and are likely to whet the appetite of those who have never seen any of his films. It would be a happy result of this book if it created a demand for Buster Keaton movies to be shown here, even if only to the limited extent Charlie Chaplin movies are shown.

The editor’s contribution to the book, apart from a selection of the stills, is mercifully limted to a brief introduction, and to brief notes when these are necessary to make the sequences he has selected intelligible to those who gave not seen the films.

If the quality of the writing in rhe introduction is any indication of the editor’s ability, he has done a far better service presenting stills in sequence than writing about Keaton’s movies.