Buster Keaton is great. Let's make that clear from the start. This surface-level documentary recitation of his filmography filled with clips from his films interjected with random celebrities spouting superlatives so as to advertise Cohen Films' new line of Keaton film restorations, "The Great Buster: A Celebration," as assembled and narrated by Peter Bogdanovich, not so great. At best, it comes across as a mediocre home-video extra. As for biographical documentaries on Keaton, I haven't seen it in years, but I'd recommend the three-part "Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow" (1987) instead. It was made by real film historians and preservationists, Kevin Brownlow and David Gill. Their outtakes-filled "Unknown Chaplin" (1983) is even more intriguing, let alone their sprawling "Hollywood" (1980) and "Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood" (1995) chronicles of silent cinema and Brownlow's books and especially his work on preserving the 1927 "Napoléon," my BFI copy, by the way, of his five-and-a-half-hours restoration screaming to finally be watched amid this year's inaugural Silent Movie Day.
The closest Bogdanovich's movie gets to getting into much of any historical depth or even interesting aesthetic analysis is when someone--Mel Brooks, maybe--holds up a copy of Eleanor Keaton and Jeffrey Vance's book, "Buster Keaton Remembered." In my experience, you can't go wrong with anything with Vance's name on it, which raises the question of why no actual historians or scholars for the talking-head interviews. Maybe they would've actually had something interesting to say, as opposed to pretty much everyone that was actually interviewed here. I mean, I don't care what the "Jackass" guy thinks makes for timeless physical comedy, let alone that he thinks he topped Keaton's falling house stunt. Talk to us in a hundred years when everyone has forgotten you.
And, I don't mean to just take shots at that easy target; all of the interviews here aren't worth more than a few factoids Bogdanovich's pals were able to glean from the internet after they were asked to make some quips for the camera that could be edited in to make it look like the documentary was going anywhere beyond a clips compilation--kind of like the ones Robert Youngson used to make, such as "The Golden Age of Comedy" (1957) or "When Comedy Was King" (1960) that just added goofy narration to highlights from silent slapstick.
It'd be another thing, too, if Buster Keaton weren't already so well known and his films so much more accessible than most silent-era filmmakers. It's not as though they were hard to get before the Cohen set. I've already seen all of his silents up to "The Cameraman" (1928) (i.e. All except for "Spite Marriage" (1929)) via Kino (Lorber) DVDs and Blu-rays. "This Is Francis X. Bushman" (2021), for instance, which I also reviewed recently, I was more forgiving of and interested in because he's no longer as well known, his films not nearly as widely available, as well as largely lost. There haven't been numerous and more insightful books and documentaries already made about him. But, again, if Bogdonavich's connections and celebrity pals can get more people interested in Keaton, it was worth it.
Indeed, I feel like watching his films now. Perhaps, I'll finally check out "Spite Marriage" despite its poor reputation, although reportedly I just saw its best gag, so maybe I'll revisit one of his classics. For my money, the cinematically-reflexive "Sherlock Jr." (1924) is his masterpiece.
