Of the three great poets of silent comedy, Buster Keaton, by no means the most popular at the time or for years afterward, may have possessed the most enduring voice. His style, that of the most extreme physical adroitness and large-scale stuntwork carried out with the straightest, most vacant of faces, has undoubtedly aged better than that of his contemporaries: Chaplin with his sometimes maundering pathos, and Lloyd's naive All-American good guy making his successful climbs to the top through sheer force of will against all the odds, retaining his innocence every step of the way. While Keaton's screen characters were often sympathetic, there was not an ounce of self-indulgent sympathy in his real-life personality or his film-making style. One never feels sorry for Buster Keaton: he has too great a knack for turning even his ineptitude into an uncommon strength.

Among modern-day filmmakers only Jackie Chan (who claims Keaton as his personal idol) comes close to providing audiences with the combination of humor and over-the-top, no-special-effects-here stunting that was Keaton's stock in trade. Keaton leapt from building to building, grabbed hold of moving trolley cars, put himself on collision course with trains, dove through windows, obliquely avoided falling house fronts, pole vaulted into windows, slid down banisters, bobbed up and down on the end of rubber ropes, rode on cowcatchers, dangled from hot-air balloons, balanced on the handlebars of speeding motorcycles, clung to plummeting fire escapes, outran cattle stampedes, allowed himself to be thrown about by hurricane force winds, survived savage beatings by prizefighters, and quite a bit more, all in the service of genuinely funny, and sometimes embarrassing, plot situations that cast him in the role of the determined underdog, not too bright, but struggling with every fibre of his being against the whims of bullies twice his size -- and sometimes against nature itself.

Keaton was, quite simply, the greatest film comedian that ever was -- but until now, his work has been hard to come by on home video. Kino Video has solved that problem in a big way with THE ART OF BUSTER KEATON, a massive ten volume set that collects every silent short and every independently-produced silent feature that Keaton ever made.

The series combines one feature with two or three shorts on every volume, probably the best commercial way to package the series, a method that provides good value for the dollar in an otherwise fairly pricey set. Rather than package the shorts in chronological order, Kino has tried to group them by theme, as when they include Keaton's two nautical shorts, THE BOAT and THE LOVE NEST with his fourth feature, THE NAVIGATOR. It's not always a satisfactory mix, but it does assure that there's at least some prime Keaton material to be found on every volume.

Volume one, THE SAPHEAD, is a case in point. The title feature is not really a Keaton starring vehicle, but a studio melodrama on which Keaton was a hired hand, providing comedy relief from the main storyline. Given that, it's surprising that Buster manages to grab as much control over the film (and our attention) as he does. Though it may be an archival gem, with historical significance as Buster's first solo featured appearance, it is not Keaton at his best; and THE HIGH SIGN, which follows it on the tape, while enjoyable and clever, is not much of an improvement. But the tape finishes off with ONE WEEK, arguably Buster's best ever two-reel short, in which newlywed Buster tries to put together a mail-order house which has had its shipping crates renumbered by a jealous rival. The mix-up that follows, climaxing with thunderstorms, train disasters and a house that spins like a wild merry-go-round, amounts to the funniest twenty minutes ever put on film.

Though remastered and restored with meticulous care, the quality of Kino's source prints varies considerably. All of the features are crystal-clear and gorgeous to look at; most have probably not looked this good since they were originally shown. But the shorts all seem to come from fairly sad, battered prints. Though they have been cleaned up, and appear here at their correct projection speed and in their original film ratio, it is sad to think that no better source prints could be found, particularly given the high quality of the feature materials.

Still, there is more Keaton here than has ever been available before. At least two previously missing shorts have been found in incomplete form, and are offered to the public for the first time in more than sixty years. The primitive Technicolor scenes that begin SEVEN CHANCES have been restored, and three rarely-screened features, including the under-rated BATTLING BUTLER, are now available for everyone's re-assessment. With Keaton's two studio-produced silents, THE CAMERAMAN and SPITE MARRIAGE, also available from Turner Home Video and most of his sound features with Jimmy Durante in print from the same source, this means that Keaton's entire career is now easily obtainable from your local video store, lacking only his early work with Roscoe Arbuckle and the sad, cheaply produced sound shorts that Keaton hacked in during the late thirties.

But unless you are already a Keaton fan, it is not likely that you're going to shell out such a large sum of money for the entire ten volumes. Newcomers to the world of Keaton are advised to sample one or two individual tapes. Best bets: volume three (OUR HOSPITALITY and SHERLOCK, JR., two of Buster's finest, most inventive features), volume four (THE NAVIGATOR and other seagoing tales) or volume eight (THE GENERAL, perhaps the first Epic comedy ever attempted, ranked by many as one of the ten best films ever made, packaged with THE PLAYHOUSE and COPS, two of his best shorts that, respectively, take him back to his vaudeville roots in a dream of the theater in which Buster plays all the parts, and the ultimate development of Keaton's favorite nightmare, that of an innocent man pursued by the boys in blue). These films are the backbone of Keaton's career; any one of them will provide a perfect introduction to his universe.

We recommend Buster to everyone, and this is the most sympathetic treatment his work has ever been given on video. Don't worry that these are silent movies. Trust us, Keaton didn't need sound, any more than he needed a stunt double. His brand of dramatic comedy is as lively as ever, and this collection has enabled us to enjoy it for years to come.

 D U C K