![]() However, Keaton's most famous stunt, from 1928's Steamboat Bill Jr., required him to stand absolutely stock-still, as the wall of a house crashes down upon him, while Keaton is saved by being stood in just the right spot to pass through the window. Instead of using doubles, he himself doubled for some of his actors, doing their stunts as well as his own." Automobile crashes, explosions, brawls, and chases were all regular fixtures of Keaton film reels, with the rubber-bodied performer seeming to take every hit that the script threw at him. As a child, Buster would perform a live act with his vaudevillian parents, in which he was hurled across the stage like a ragdoll, per The Oldie. When he finally made it to Hollywood as a young man, Keaton transitioned his slapstick effortlessly to the silver screen.Įbert claims, "no silent star did more dangerous stunts than Buster Keaton. Here are just a few that are worth revisiting.īut Keaton's prowess was in his physicality. As such, the silent era of film contains some of the most innovative, ballsy, and downright jaw-dropping moments that still have the wow-factor associated with good movies even today, 100 years down the line, and which continue to inspire today's most boundary-pushing filmmakers. But what did exist in droves back in the first decades of commercial cinema was ingenuity, ambition, and a very real desire to entertain. ![]() Film itself was in its infancy, the footage often grainy, with performers having to overact and don extravagant makeup to portray the thrust of the narrative through what was, at the time, a primitive medium. Movies would arrive at the cinema in reels with no more than a 15-minute run time, before they had to be changed manually by a projectionist. ![]() The primitive technology of early 20th century cinema is perhaps easily overlooked - instead of a soundtrack that existed as part of the film, cinema audiences would be treated to live musical accompaniment to the latest releases from movie studios.
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