All language subtitles for Buster.Keaton.The.Genius.Crushed.by.Hollywood.PDTV.x265.AAC.MVGroup.org.eng

October, 1964.

Buster Keaton makes his last trip.

He is sick and within a few months
he will be dead.

It has been 30 years
since he last starred in a film
worthy of his genius.

To earn a living, he appears
in commercials and TV shows.

In the 1920s, he was one of the most
famous movie stars in the world.

His films earned millions.

They were among the funniest,
most emotional, most inventive movies
of the silent era.

But within a few years,
by the mid-'30s, he was broke.
All washed up.

It's a story
as old as American cinema itself -

the artist
up against the studio system,

a filmmaker shackled by producers
and crushed by the Hollywood machine,

a man sinking into decay
and alcohol,

a once-glorious star suffering
an abrupt fall from grace.

1928.

Buster Keaton is at the pinnacle
of his success.

All around the world, audiences
recognise him and adore him.

The sound of laughter resonates
through movie theatres
at the sight of his deadpan face.

He was the man who never laughed,
nicknamed Old Stoneface.

Topped off with a boater hat
as flat as a gramophone record,
his face was an imperturbable mirror.

A mirror that reflects
the emotions of cinemagoers.

Keaton had a strange beauty,
one that was both melancholic
and irremediably odd.

He could make audiences laugh
and cry at the same time.

He had no need to pull faces,
as actors habitually did back then.

All it took was a tiny shift
in expression, a light in his big
eyes, or the ghost of a frown.

Keaton never smiled
because he didn't need to.

He had other ways of showing
he was happy.

His body expressed his emotions.

The way he turned around
or walked.

When Buster Keaton was in a scene,
you couldn't take your eyes off him.
He lit up the screen.

Buster Keaton was born on the stage.

His parents were music hall
performers and from the age of four
he was part of the show.

Very soon, he became the most famous
member of the troupe.

Like a circus kid,
he learned how to perform
the most improbable stunts.

Controlling his body was like
a sixth sense. He knew how to fall
without hurting himself,

always avoiding landing on his neck,
spinal column, elbows or knees.

He knew which muscles to tighten
and which to relax.
Buster could do it all.

He was a gymnast, acrobat,
trapeze artist, dancer
and athlete rolled into one.

It seems inconceivable now,
but he never used a stunt double.

As well as being an actor,
he was the boldest stuntman
in the history of cinema.

Stuntman? No, the word fails
to do him justice.

Buster was a funambulist.

He toyed with danger, mocked it,

sneered at it.

When he was shooting a movie,
Buster took horrifying,
yet carefully calculated risks.

Nothing scared him.

His death-defying antics
dazzled audiences.

In Steamboat Bill Junior,
he perfectly performed a stunt
he'd already tried out in a short.

To make the facade of a building
fall on him, he had to stand

in exactly the right spot.
The slightest miscalculation
and he would have a broken neck.

Buster was from another planet.

He made the most difficult stunts
seem stunningly simple.

While filming Three Ages,
his first feature-length movie,

he misjudged a jump
between two buildings.

His injuries forced him off the set
and three days of filming were lost.

But the fall was so spectacular
that the take was used in the movie.

Buster edited it onto another stunt
to wrap up the sequence.

Well, my old man
was an eccentric comic.

And as soon as I could take care
of myself at all on my feet,

he'd just start doing gags with me,
kicking me clean across the stage

or taking me by the back of the neck
and throwing me.

As I grew up to around 7 and 8 years
old, we were called the roughest act
ever in the history of the stage.

In spite of his incredible talent,
Buster carried it all off
with effortless elegance.

Despite boasting astonishing
suppleness and dexterity,

he had a preference for playing
clumsy and awkward types.

The man with the perfectly-toned
muscles invariably played the wimp.

Buster was the puny weakling
forced to tackle the tough guys,

sinister types
ready to make him suffer.

Artists are not always
sound businessmen

and in the early '20s Buster hooked
up with a producer, Joe Schenck.

Schenck took care of the financial
details so that Buster could
concentrate on what he did best,

the artistic direction of his films.

Their arrangement meant Buster had
complete creative control
over his movies.

He was the sole captain of the ship,
accountable for his ongoing projects
only as a courtesy.

He was free to supervise
every aspect of production.

He wrote, directed, starred in
and edited his movies.

Buster called the shots,
played any part.

At Keaton's small studio,
he surrounded himself with a band of
faithful sidemen

on whom he tested his ideas
before shooting a movie.

His cameraman was one of the best in
the business, while his set decorator
was a master of his craft.

"It was a case of anything goes
and we'd try anything," he said.

"No humourless money men told us
what to do. We alone decided

"what a movie needed
to get a laugh out of the audience."

Surrounded by his team,
Buster was like a skilled artisan,

meticulous
and with total dedication.

During a shoot,
he left himself room to improvise,

but if he particularly liked a scene
he might spend several days
getting it right,

and if the edited sequence did not
work as he'd hoped, he shot it again
whatever the cost.

Thanks to his independence
and artistic freedom, his talent
was allowed to fully blossom.

Between 1920 and 1928,
he shot 19 shorts
and ten feature-length films.

His creativity knew no bounds.

Every film was more inventive
than the last. Buster's exploits
became more and more audacious.

Nothing was too challenging for him.

It turned out that the man
who almost never attended school
was a born scientist.

Had he not been a filmmaker, he'd
have wanted to be a civil engineer.

But more than a civil engineer,
he was above all a poetic engineer.

In his film The Scarecrow,
Buster dreamed up a small
and very practical home

in which every object
was dual purpose.

The gramophone was also a gas cooker.
The bed was a piano.

And the table allowed a meal to be
eaten without an inch of space wasted
and everything within easy reach.

And once the meal was over,
clearing the table and washing up
was child's play.

Buster also took a keen interest
in film technology.

The first thing he did, even before
starting his career in movies,

was to completely dismantle a camera
to find out how it worked.

Thereafter, he constantly sought
to use the camera in original ways.

Throughout the 1920s,
he experimented with what was still
a new art form.

By seeing only his comic acting
performances, it was easy
for audiences to overlook

his most important quality -
his genius as a filmmaker.

Buster's shots are all carefully
and perfectly composed.

As a director, his ideas are
delightful and often disarming
in their poetry and simplicity.

Oh, my God!

# Happy birthday to you

# Happy birthday to you

# Happy birthday, dear Buster

# Happy birthday to you. #

I better get a whistle.

A real steam engine. A real one.

Buster Keaton was always fascinated
by trains.

Old trains, trolley cars,
locomotives,

wagons, steps and balconies.

It sometimes seemed as though
making movies was just a big excuse
for him to play with trains.

He liked to build
detailed reconstructions.

He ran after trains, caught them
in mid air, climbed over them,
walked on them, straddled them,

sat down on them wherever he could,
wherever he pleased.

He took them to escape or to travel
far from home, unless he got himself
thrown off first.

In 1926,
he dedicated an entire film,
The General, to his great love.

In this movie, Buster is
a train driver trying to recover
his beloved locomotive.

To save his true love,
he must save his train
and vice versa.

Using his acute sense of geometry,
Keaton constructed his film in two
almost-perfectly symmetrical parts.

Along the way, he pulled off
some of his trademark feats.

Everything is filmed
on a moving train and always
without a stunt double.

For the shot in which the enemy
engine is destroyed, using a model
was out of the question.

He had a bridge constructed
over a river in Oregon
and drove a real train off it.

These few seconds of film
cost $42,000

the most expensive
in the history of silent film.

The movie itself cost a total
of $750,000,
a huge budget in those days.

The General is a masterpiece,
but it ended up overshadowing other
equally wonderful Keaton movies.

Sherlock Junior. The Navigator.
Go West. Battling Butler.

These films were hugely popular
with cinema audiences.

In the mid-1920s, Buster Keaton was,
along with Charlie Chaplin
and Harold Lloyd,

the most famous comedy actor
in the world.

He was barely 30 years old.

His face still had
a childlike quality.

And his childhood often provided him
with the material for his films.

Buster used to tell a story of how,
as a child, he was awakened
by the roar of a whirlwind.

At the window, he was sucked outside,
thrown into the road
and carried away by the wind,

his small body flung about
like a leaf.

He was eventually rescued,
but he had had a narrow escape.

Many years later, as a filmmaker,
he recreated it
in an astonishing sequence.

To recreate the potency
of a cyclone, Buster set up
aircraft engines on the set.

Then, as the camera filmed him,
he danced with the wind.

In his movies, when Buster wanted
to attract a girl, he never did so
by flexing his muscles

or showing off.

Rather, he used infinite tenderness,

the romanticism of the eternal lover.

In real life,
Buster married Natalie Talmadge.

Natalie had two sisters,
both of them movie stars.

One was married to Joe Schenck,
Buster's producer.

Buster had cast his wife Natalie
in his film Our Hospitality.

Basically, the entire family
was in movies.

Buster and Natalie had a dog
and two children.

They lived in a huge villa
in Beverly Hills, which Buster had
constructed in 1925.

Seven bedrooms, six servants,
with a three-room apartment above the
garage for the driver and his wife.

Five acres of lawn,
one huge bed for Natalie,
another for Buster.

In his spacious home,
Buster even set aside a room
in which to edit his films.

Natalie organised the most popular
costume parties in Hollywood.

All the big movie stars
and film producers flocked to them.

Their lifestyle was
most unlike Keaton,

but as a former child performer
who grew up on the road, he denied
himself nothing - nice cars,

luxurious clothes, sports equipment.

Buster Keaton was 32
and the world was his oyster.

He was rich, famous
and married to a society woman.

His films were praised
by the critics,
his private life seemed perfect.

He even took the occasional mistress.

Best of all, though,
he was an independent filmmaker,
answerable only to his audience.

Buster had everything a man could
wish for. What more could he want?

Bigger movies?
More money? More success?

What exactly was Buster Keaton
running after?

At the pinnacle of his success,
he made what he would later describe
as the biggest mistake of his life.

In 1928, Joe Schenck,
Buster's brother-in-law and producer,
gave him the worst possible advice,

urging him to sign
for the rapidly-expanding
MGM Hollywood studios.

Buster was instinctively
against the move. He feared he'd be
swamped in such a huge structure,

but Schenck insisted, as though
pushing Buster's head into the noose.

Buster turned to his friend,
Charlie Chaplin, for advice.

Chaplin told him, "Don't do it.
They'll ruin you, helping you.

"They'll warp your judgment.
You'll get tired of arguing
for things you know are right.

"It's not that they aren't any good.
They have the best guys in the
country, but there are too many

"and they'll all want to have a say
in your movies, like too many cooks
in the same kitchen."

In the end, Buster gave in
to the relentless pressure.

Closing down his small studio,
he moved in at MGM.

The pay was good - $3,000 a week -
and he was given his own little house
inside the studio.

The promised movie-making paradise
turned out to be hell for Buster.

In return, he had unwittingly
given up his most precious asset -
his artistic independence.

With the stroke of a pen,
Buster signed away his freedom
as a filmmaker.

His contract stipulated that he would
be consulted on storylines,
but would not have the last word.

That would be the decision
of the MGM producer.

When Buster started working at MGM,
the studio was already a huge factory
churning out movies.

They had six studios, hundreds
of technicians and 18 press attaches
employed full-time

to publicise their films.

MGM was also an extraordinary machine
that manufactured screen icons.

Overnight, studio bosses could
transform an extra dreaming of glory

into an international star.

They taught them to walk, to speak,
to dance, changed their names
and dyed their hair.

At the head of this operation,
Louis B Mayer ran the studio
with an iron fist.

He controlled the private lives
of his stars, married them off when
rumours of homosexuality took hold

in the tabloid press, exchanged
performers with other studios,

all the while jealously watching over
his child stars.

For Mayer, the key ingredients
to a successful movie were,
in order of importance,

a star, then the producer,
then the script and finally,
a long way behind, the director.

In the middle of all this bustle,
Buster was just one more star
among so many others,

just another product promoted by
the publicity department
alongside a host of others.

I decided on a plot. We always
looked for the story first.

And the minute somebody came up
with a good start,
we jumped to the finish.

If a man gets into this situation,
how does he get out of it?

As soon as we found out how to get
out of it, then we went back
and worked on the middle.

We always figured the middle would
take care of itself.

Right from the outset, Buster saw his
working methods undermined at MGM.

Little by little,
his small band of loyal supporters
were taken away from him.

Instead he was given new technicians
to work with, studio employees
whose first priority was

to satisfy the boss and immediate
superior. The quest for technical
perfection was counterproductive.

As Buster himself said,
"No film ever became a masterpiece
only through perfect lighting

"or outstanding camerawork."

Worse still, MGM demanded
that Keaton write a script,
something he had never done before.

He'd always built the storyline
of his movies through discussions
with his team,

assembling everything in his head,
but at MGM there was no messing
around with screenplays.

To better oversee the work,
Louis B Mayer applied
strict division of labour.

One writer was charged with coming up
with ideas, another with writing
the story, a third the dialogue,

which was rewritten by a fourth
before the script was polished
by a fifth.

Rewrites could involve 36 writers
working on the same script.

For Buster,
this method was a disaster.

He found himself surrounded
by a gaggle of writers each striving
to impose his ideas

to justify his fee.

Suddenly, everybody was involved
in his job, including administrators
and producers.

All the chatter, the meetings
and the brilliant minds, Buster began
to doubt his own instincts.

The man who liked to improvise
on set now found himself forced
to stick to a script.

Before long, he wouldn't even be
allowed to do his own stunts,

probably deemed too risky
by the insurance company.

Nevertheless, Buster's first film
for MGM, The Cameraman, is a marvel,

in no small part because Buster
managed to ditch the studio's
screenplay,

using the circumstances
that arose on set as an excuse.

While shooting scenes in New York,
Buster was recognised by passers-by.

A crowd of onlookers gathered,
making it impossible for the film
to be shot as required.

The scene was recorded
by an amateur cameraman.

According to the carefully-worded
screenplay, nobody in New York
knows our hero.

Unable to stick to the script,
Keaton seized the opportunity
to introduce his own ideas.

MGM would not be fooled twice.
While Buster's second MGM feature,
Spite Marriage, has its moments,

it's no match for his best work.

With our early successes,

we had to get sympathy
to make any story stand up.

But the one thing that I made sure

was that I didn't ask for it.

'If the audience wanted to feel
sorry for me, that was up to them.

'I didn't ask for it in action.'

One heart.

Come on in.

Any special page? Under the K.

# Come all you rounders
Gather here and there

# For a story I'm gonna tell you
about a brave engineer

# Casey Jones
was the gentleman's name
On a 6-8 wheeler, he won his fame

# Pulled out the station
with a big heavy train

# Kept on going
till he struck the main

# The man at the throttle
was Casey Jones

# Casey was a-going at a terrible
pace when 444 stared him
right in the face

# The fireman said,
"Boy, you better jump cos two
locomotives are a-going to bump!"

# Casey Jones, got another poppa
Got another poppa
on the Salt Lake Line! #

By the end of the 1920s,
Hollywood was in the throes
of a major revolution.

Buster Keaton had nothing against
talkies. On the contrary,

he had ideas about how to use sound
in his films.

In 1929, he even asked MGM
to shoot his film Spite Marriage
with dialogue.

The studio's reply was that
their sound equipment was primarily
for musicals and dramas,

not Keaton-type films.

When the studio finally cast him
in a talkie, it was to make him sing
in a ridiculous costume.

# Show girls, slow girls
Here's your only chance and how

# Free and easy... #

The film, Free And Easy,
made a lot of money for MGM, although
the movie is a disappointment.

Because his talkies were artistic
failures, it was long assumed
that it was the arrival of sound

that killed him.
But the studio's methods
were his real undoing.

A short from 1934 entitled Allez Oop
showed that he could use dialogue
in a very inventive way.

It's my watch that needs attention,
not me. Oh, yes.

Name, please. Paula Stevens.

Phone number? 987.

Married or single? Single.

Engaged? What has that to do
with repairing a watch?

Oh...I thought
maybe I'd deliver it to you.

MGM clearly wasn't for him.

He found himself very much alone,
working in a system that was
over his head.

In the early 1930s,
Louis B Mayer decided to cast Keaton
alongside comic actor Jimmy Durante

in a series of films. It was
as though Buster was no longer
considered heavyweight enough

to carry a film on his own,
as though the brilliant soloist
suddenly needed help.

It's persecution!
Unadulterated persecution!

Jimmy Durante, which his machine-gun
delivery and outlandish style,
was the polar opposite of Buster.

Casting two such incompatible stars
in the same movie made little sense.

Listen to me...

But Buster was dealing with studio
bosses who were churning out movies,

sticking to a formula that met
their manufacturing specifications.

With Buster's very personal style
at loggerheads with
the well-oiled MGM machine,

the studio now sought
to sideline him.

Making movies is exhausting enough,
but banging your head
against a wall

when you know you're right
makes it even more so.
In the end, Buster gave up.

One could imagine the frustration,
anger and suffering of a filmmaker
stripped of his freedom.

Within just a few short years,
Buster found himself trapped,

suffocated by a system he had
signed up to of his own free will.

Forced to appear in films
unworthy of his talent, Buster
started drinking more and more.

On the set of the movie
embarrassingly titled What - No Beer?

he was drinking so much
that he went missing for a day.

His absence brought production
to a standstill and cost MGM
a whole working day.

In one scene in the film, you can
hear the alcohol in his voice.

Near beer?
That's it. Near beer. No.

But that was not all.

Shortly afterwards,
Buster openly defied MGM tsar
Louis B Mayer himself.

Mayer often demanded that his stars
appear in promotional films.

Keaton, weary of these staged
assignations, refused to play ball.

# ..in the rain
We're singing in the rain... #

The following Monday,
he found a curt letter
on his dressing room table.

"Your services at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Studios are no longer required."
Signed Louis B Mayer.

Humiliated, Buster swore that he
would never set foot in MGM again.

Having been let go by MGM,
Buster was available to work
for any of the other big studios -

Paramount, Columbia, Warner Brothers,
Universal, Fox, RKO -

but not one of the majors made him
an offer. Known to be an alcoholic
and difficult to work with,

he'd become a pariah in Hollywood.

When I was six months old,
in a small hotel,

I fell down a full flight of stairs
to the bottom.

I didn't cry,

so they knew I wasn't hurt.

And Houdini says,
"That was sure a buster,"

meaning a fall.
And my father said, "Well,
that would be a good name for him.

"It don't sound bad."

In his films, Keaton had the art
of falling down to perfection.

Since childhood, he fell
as naturally as he breathed,

but this particular fall
would prove to be a difficult one
to get up from.

His private life collapsed
like a house of cards.

His wife filed for divorce.

Buster lost everything -

his sumptuous home in Beverly Hills,
his beautiful cars, his fortune.

A further dagger blow was delivered
with his wife's legal application

to have their children's surname
changed from Keaton to Talmadge.

Keaton was drinking so much
that he ended up suffering from
delirium tremens.

In his fevered nightmares,
driven mad by his cravings,

he apparently saw himself attacked
by rodents and insects.

Committed to an asylum, he was forced
to undergo shock treatment.

Keaton was force-fed drinks
by barmen in white coats

whose job it was to deliberately
aggravate his heartburn

until he couldn't swallow
another drop of alcohol.

To earn a living,
Buster took any work he could,

appearing in low-budget shorts.

The man who only a few years earlier
had been directing blockbusters

was now begging to be allowed
to direct one of these small films.

Buster Keaton was barely
40 years old. In just a few years,

he went from being a worldwide star
to a washed-up artist with no future.

How did it come to this for
such a giant of the movie industry?

Hollywood is an ogre
that devours its own children.

In one final, ironic twist, Buster
ended up seeking a return to MGM,

not as a director,
much less a star actor.

He was offered a job as a gag man,
offering advice on other people's
films, uncredited,

for the princely sum of $100 a week.

Then, just when he reached rock
bottom, life offered him a new start.

In 1940, Buster fell in love
with an MGM dancer.

Eleanor Norris would stay with him
until the end of his days.

With her help,
he emerged from a long nightmare,
like a drowned man coming up for air.

Buster Keaton had regained
his footing.

In the ensuing 25 years,
Keaton carried on working,

taking supporting roles in movies,
appearing in television serials
and commercials

that re-used the gags from his films
as a way of reviving the magic
of his youth.

Buster Keaton became a living
imprint, the image of a golden age
of comedy,

now looked back upon with nostalgia
and affection.

The remorseless old beast of
Hollywood paid him one final tribute.

In 1960, Keaton was given
an honorary Oscar,

like a medal awarded to a general
who is being stood down
once and for all.

Footage of the presentation
has been lost.

His films, meanwhile, preserved on
fragile, highly-inflammable spools,

were in danger
of disappearing altogether.

Fortunately, thanks to a collector,
the masterpieces of Buster Keaton
have been transferred

to more durable media.

Some of them, of which no known copy
remained, were found in a secret
chamber behind the editing room

of his former home.

His re-released films found
a new audience.

At last, his genius lived again.

In his latter years, he was
rediscovered by a new generation
of filmmakers.

In 1964, he appeared in a short
called The Railrodder

in which he journeys across Canada
by railroad at high speed
in a small vehicle.

The shoot, during which Buster
travelled by train, was filmed.

It captures all the poetry,
simplicity and grace
of Buster Keaton.

In February, 1966,
Buster died from lung cancer.

In his coffin,
he clutched a rosary in one hand

and a pack of cards in the other,
ready for either an eternity
in heaven

or a game of cards in hell.

Killed off artistically
30 years earlier,
his films will live on forever.