The Cinematheque

New Restoration

Buster Keaton’s movie-making genius and comic derring-do were rarely on better display than in the sometimes-underrated Steamboat Bill, Jr., one of his finest achievements. The film has Buster as a dandyish college boy reunited with his gruff, burly father, a Mississippi riverboat captain disappointed by his diminutive son’s foppish ways. The striking technical polish and beautifully detailed depiction of small-town Southern life are characteristic of Keaton’s best work. One memorable comic scene—“peerless and much imitated” (Pauline Kael)—has Keaton hilariously trying on a series of hats. The spectacular cyclone climax, including the famous (and death-defying) falling-house stunt, is one of the great sequences in the Keaton canon. The movie, which lost money, was Keaton’s last independent feature; his production company was dissolved and he relinquished his creative freedom to sign with MGM. His career subsequently went into decline.