Buster Keaton: The Genius Destroyed by Hollywood

Feb 7, 2016

0h 52m

★ 7.9

Overview

In 1926, Buster Keaton was at the peak of his glory and wealth. By 1933, he had reached rock bottom. How, in the space of a few years, did this uncontested genius of silent films, go from the status of being a widely-worshipped star to an alcoholic and solitary fallen idol? With a spotlight on the 7 years during which his life changed, using extracts of Keaton’s films as magnifying mirrors, the documentary recounts the dramatic life of this creative genius and the Hollywood studios.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

Quark Productions

ARTE

Buster Keaton: The Genius Destroyed by Hollywood Trailers

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Cast

Self

Buster Keaton

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

No Image Available

7.0

The Dawn of Sound: How Movies Learned to Talk

Sep 2, 2007

Film historians, and survivors from the nearly 30-year struggle to bring sound to motion pictures take the audience from the early failed attempts by scientists and inventors, to the triumph of the talkies.

7.1

Nanook of the North

Jun 11, 1922

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

7.8

Man with a Movie Camera

May 12, 1929

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

0.0

Voyeur

Feb 18, 2017

An evocative portrait of people having orgasms, lingering on the silent classical face of ecstasy.

6.9

À propos de Nice

May 28, 1930

What starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Côte d'Azur, especially its wealthy inhabitants.

6.8

Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness

Apr 29, 1927

Elephants disrupt the lives of a family deep in the jungles of Northern Siam, and an entire village.

5.9

Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge

Oct 15, 1888

A film by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, shot in late October 1888, showing pedestrians and carriages crossing Leeds Bridge.

5.5

Days of Thrills and Laughter

Mar 21, 1961

An appreciative, uncritical look at silent film comedies and thrillers from early in the century through the 1920s.

3.0

The History of the Civil War

Jun 1, 1921

The epic story of the Russian Civil War (1918-21): the White Terror, the counterrevolutionary uprisings, the guerrilla war, the Kolchak front, the Wrangel front and the Kronstadt rebellion. Chaos and violence, devastation and death.

7.6

Häxan

Sep 18, 1922

Grave robbing, torture, possessed nuns, and a satanic Sabbath: Benjamin Christensen's legendary film uses a series of dramatic vignettes to explore the scientific hypothesis that the witches of the Middle Ages suffered the same hysteria as turn-of-the-century psychiatric patients. But the film itself is far from serious-- instead it's a witches' brew of the scary, gross, and darkly humorous.

6.4

Passage of Venus

Dec 9, 1874

Photo sequence of the rare transit of Venus over the face of the Sun, one of the first chronophotographic sequences. In 1873, P.J.C. Janssen, or Pierre Jules César Janssen, invented the Photographic Revolver, which captured a series of images in a row. The device, automatic, produced images in a row without human intervention, being used to serve as photographic evidence of the passage of Venus before the Sun, in 1874.

3.5

A Hand Shake

Jan 1, 1892

William K.L. Dickson and William Heise shake hands in this early experimental film.

4.9

Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze

Jan 9, 1894

A man (Thomas Edison's assistant) takes a pinch of snuff and sneezes. This is one of the earliest Thomas Edison films and was the second motion picture to be copyrighted in the United States.

4.9

Playing Cards

Jan 1, 1896

Three friends are playing cards in a beer garden. One of them orders drinks. The waitress comes back with a bottle of wine and three glasses on a tray. The man serves his friends. They clink glasses and drink. Then the man asks for a newspaper. He reads a funny story in it and the three friends burst out laughing while the waitress merely smiles.

5.7

Divers at Work on the Wreck of the "Maine"

Jan 1, 1898

Divers go to work on a wrecked ship (the battleship Maine that was blown up in Havana harbour during the Spanish-American War), surrounded by curiously disproportionate fish.

4.9

Accordion Player

Jan 1, 1888

The last remaining film of Le Prince's LPCCP Type-1 MkII single-lens camera is a sequence of frames of his son, Adolphe Le Prince, playing a diatonic button accordion. It was recorded on the steps of the house of Joseph Whitley, Adolphe's grandfather.

6.7

Manhatta

Jan 1, 1921

Morning reveals New York harbor, the wharves, the Brooklyn Bridge. A ferry boat docks, disgorging its huddled mass. People move briskly along Wall St. or stroll more languorously through a cemetery. Ranks of skyscrapers extrude columns of smoke and steam. In plain view. Or framed, as through a balustrade. A crane promotes the city's upward progress, as an ironworker balances on a high beam. A locomotive in a railway yard prepares to depart, while an arriving ocean liner jostles with attentive tugboats. Fading sunlight is reflected in the waters of the harbor. The imagery is interspersed with quotations from Walt Whitman, who is left unnamed.

5.5

Kino-Pravda No. 1

Jun 5, 1922

Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Starving children / Requisitioning of valuables possessed by the Russian Orthodox Church / Fundraising flights in support of the hungry / Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries.

7.2

The Great Buster: A Celebration

Oct 5, 2018

A celebration of the life and career of one of America's most influential and celebrated filmmakers and comedians—Buster Keaton—whose singular style and fertile output during the silent era created his legacy as a true cinematic visionary.

Buster Keaton: The Genius Destroyed by Hollywood

Overview

Genres

Production Companies

Buster Keaton: The Genius Destroyed by Hollywood Trailers