#charles reisner

[in-love-with-movies]

The Kid (1921)

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

Have you seen Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)?

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Haven’t even heard of this movie

Voting ended onJan 5, 2025

[ofimaginarybeings]

Steamboat Bill Jr. (Charles Reisner, 1928)

Buster Keaton and Ernest Torrence in Steamboat Bill Jr. (Charles Reisner, 1928)

Cast: Buster Keaton, Tom McGuire, Ernest Torrence, Tom Lewis, Marion Byron. Screenplay: Carl Harbaugh. Cinematography: Bert Haines, Devereaux Jennings. Film editing: Sherman Kell. 

This is probably the film I’d choose for someone who has never seen Buster Keaton and wants to know what all the fuss is about. It’s not as neatly paced and well-balanced between comedy and action as The General (Keaton and Clyde Bruckman, 1926), but it’s non-stop funny. It contains what is perhaps Keaton’s greatest gag, the scene in which the façade of a house falls around him, neatly landing with Keaton in the dead center of its open attic window. It also centers on the quintessential Keaton persona: the misfit who triumphs, stoic but determined, even in the face of parental scorn or the forces of nature, both of which supply most of the film’s plot. For me, the iconic Keaton is the one who faces down the winds of a tornado, leaning in at a 45-degree angle, getting blown off his feet but rising to fight again. Of all the great comic personae, Keaton’s was the most inner-directed. He never resorts to self-pity or pleads for pathos, as Chaplin sometimes did. When his father (Ernest Torrence) tries to replace his Eastern college wardrobe with something more befitting a Mississippi River steamboat captain’s son, Keaton resists by slyly, repeatedly replacing the paternal choices with his own, a great crescendo of stubbornness and exasperation. Virtually all the elements of the Keaton persona are present in Steamboat Bill Jr., with one exception: the porkpie hat. But even it gets a brief cameo in a sequence in which Keaton tries on a sequence of hilariously inappropriate hats, modeling each one with the exception of the porkpie he is handed, which he rejects with disgust. Although the direction is credited to Charles Reisner and the screenplay to Carl Harbaugh, both were primarily the work of Keaton.

[gatutor]

William Bakewell-Jean Parker "You can´t buy everything" 1934, de Charles Reisner.

[citizenscreen]

Director Charles Reisner with Guy Kibbee between takes on set of THIS TIME FOR KEEPS (1942).

[busterkeatonsociety]

ThrowbackThursday This article from Broadway and Hollywood Movies, show Buster Keaton, Oliver Hardy, Stan Laurel, Jimmy Durante and director Charles Reisner playing a game of bridge. From December 1932.

[chaplinfortheages]

"The Kid" 1921

Publicity photos for release of the film in Hungary.

[leatherhearted]

STEAMBOAT BILL, JR. (1928, dir. Charles Reisner, Buster Keaton)