What makes a great picture?
Buster Keaton’s impossible gags
Before digital images or CGI, Buster Keaton made films which were cinematically complex and employed stunts which seemed physically impossible.
Sherlock Jr (1923) is one of my favorite Keaton movies. The YouTube video “Buster Keaton Sherlock Jr Making of” analyzes and explains what techniques and cinematic tricks were used in the movie such as double exposure, careful lighting, matting etc. He also breaks down the stunts and illusions performed in the movie, which was what I was most curious about as some of them seemed either too dangerous to be performed or simply seemed impossible given the limitations of analogue film-making then.
In a part of the movie, Keaton appears to jump through the body of a man and disappears behind him as the man walks away. This amazed me. The video explains how this stunt was carefully setup and executed.
Another stunt which I was very curious about was actually quite simple. It was a thrilling an arresting scene when Buster rides on a uncontrolled motorcycle and approaches a train track just as a train approaches rapidly, seeming to collide but misses by what seemed to be a few inches at the time of my first viewing. The scene was simply shot in reverse.
This video was a real eye-opener for me to many fundamental cinematic techniques and tricks and theatrical illusions, many of which stems of Keaton’s childhood experience in vaudeville.
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