100 Years Later Buster Keaton Still Has Us Asking How Did He Do That?
Celebrate The General's centennial with seven Buster Keaton movies on Tubi, featuring trains, falling houses, and stunts that still make physics look optional.
A hundred years ago, Buster Keaton looked at a locomotive, a burning bridge, and the general concept of personal safety and thought: we can make a movie out of this. While filming The General (1926) in Oregon, Keaton staged one of the most famous stunts in silent-film history by sending an actual locomotive across a collapsing bridge and into the river. A century later, fans are still gathering at the filming locations to celebrate the movie and we're still watching the stunt wondering how anyone got insurance after this.
That's the fun of going back through Buster Keaton's work now. The silent-film legend's famously deadpan expression barely changes while trains chase him, buildings fall around him, boats refuse to cooperate, and gravity repeatedly attempts to become his scene partner. But underneath the physical comedy was an inventive actor, director, and filmmaker who understood exactly where to put the camera, how long to hold the shot, and when to let an elaborate visual gag speak completely for itself.
Tubi's For the Cinephiles collection celebrates the kind of groundbreaking movies that changed what came after them, and these Keaton's movies make a pretty convincing case for going back to where some of that cinematic language was still being invented.
The General
One hundred years later, we're starting with the train. Obviously. The General casts Keaton as Johnny Gray, a Southern railroad engineer whose beloved locomotive is stolen during the Civil War, sending him into a chase that gradually becomes one of silent cinema's most famous action-comedy sequences.
Keaton doesn't simply perform around the locomotive; he turns the entire machine into part of the choreography. He runs across it, sits on its moving rods, clears obstacles from the tracks and somehow maintains the famous Buster Keaton Stone Face while enormous pieces of machinery create chaos around him. Then there's the famous train wreck, staged by sending a real locomotive through a burning bridge. No CGI. No miniature train taking the fall. They actually crashed the train. Cinema!
Sherlock Jr. (Colorized)
If The General makes you question Keaton's relationship with physical safety, Sherlock Jr. will make you question how movies were doing this in 1924. Keaton plays a projectionist who dreams himself into the film he's showing, and from there the movie starts playing with editing, visual effects, perspective, and the boundaries of the movie screen itself. One moment he's standing in one location; a cut happens and the world completely changes around him while Keaton remains trapped inside the gag.
You don't need a century of film-history knowledge to appreciate one of Buster Keaton's most celebrated silent films. Your brain simply goes wait...HOW? Keaton understood that the camera could do more than record comedy; the camera itself could become part of the joke. A hundred-plus years later, some of those visual tricks still feel startlingly modern.
Steamboat Bill, Jr.
You may not know Steamboat Bill, Jr. yet, but you probably know Buster Keaton's famous falling-house stunt. The comedy puts Keaton aboard the riverboat world of his estranged captain father before a cyclone turns the final stretch into an escalating showcase of physical comedy. And then a building facade falls directly toward him. Keaton doesn't run. He stands there while an open window lands perfectly around his body.
It's become one of the defining images of silent cinema for a reason. The timing has to be exact, Keaton's position has to be exact, and the margin for suddenly discovering the calculations were wrong is not something we'd particularly like to think about. Watch the famous stunt, absolutely. But stay for the movie around it, where Keaton keeps finding new ways to make one man versus the elements considerably funnier than it has any right to be.
The Navigator
The Navigator strands Keaton's wealthy Rollo Treadway and Kathryn McGuire's Betsy aboard a massive ship with nobody else around to operate it. Which gives Keaton exactly what he loves: an enormous mechanical environment and unlimited opportunities to discover that ordinary tasks become significantly more complicated when the equipment is approximately 40 times your size.
The ship becomes a giant comedy playground as Rollo and Betsy try to feed themselves, navigate the vessel, and generally behave like two people who absolutely did not read the manual before departure. It's also a perfect showcase for Keaton's signature physical comedy and fascination with machinery. The Navigator may technically be a boat. Buster is treating it like a very large, deeply uncooperative costar.
Our Hospitality
A centuries-old family feud has one important rule: you cannot kill a guest while they're inside your home. Buster Keaton is all for it in Our Hospitality. Keaton’s Willie McKay travels south to claim an inheritance and unknowingly enters territory controlled by a family that has been feuding with his own for generations. Once Willie realizes their code of hospitality protects him while he's under their roof, leaving suddenly becomes a deeply unattractive proposition.
Instead of relying on one enormous machine, the comedy comes from rules, timing, and Willie desperately finding reasons to remain somebody's guest for just a little longer. It's an excellent Buster Keaton deep cut for anyone who's seen the famous stunt compilations and wants proof that Keaton could build a joke just as carefully as he could fall off something.
Go West
And now, an important chapter in the Buster Keaton canon: Buster gets a cow best friend. Go West sends Keaton's down-on-his-luck character Friendless west in search of opportunity, where he ends up working on a ranch and forming an unexpectedly sweet bond with Brown Eyes, a cow who becomes more loyal to him than most humans have managed to be.
The deadpan physical comedy is still there, but Go West gives Keaton's Stone Face a surprisingly tender setting. Friendless doesn't suddenly become sentimental; that's not exactly the brand. Instead, Keaton lets the friendship play with the same sincerity he gives everything else, which somehow makes man meets cow genuinely charming.
Battling Butler
Alfred Butler has money, privilege, and absolutely no business being inside a boxing ring. Unfortunately, everyone now thinks he's a champion. Battling Butler gives Keaton a mistaken-identity problem after his pampered character pretends to be a famous boxer with the same name to impress a woman. This works right up until maintaining the lie starts requiring something considerably more difficult than confidence: actual boxing ability.
It's another fun Buster Keaton deep cut because the comedy is less dependent on giant machines than some of Keaton's best-known work. Rather, you get to watch the permanently composed Stone Face attempt to bluff his way through a situation his body is eventually going to have to answer for. Fake it till you make it. Unless “it” is professional boxing. Maybe reconsider.
The Great Buster: A Celebration
Peter Bogdanovich's The Great Buster: A Celebration steps outside Keaton's fictional worlds to look at the man who created them, tracing his career from vaudeville, and silent-film stardom through difficult career turns and the eventual rediscovery of his work. Mel Brooks, Quentin Tarantino, Werner Herzog, and other admirers help put into perspective just how far Keaton's influence traveled.
Save it for last. After watching him commandeer trains, disappear into movie screens, survive falling buildings, battle ocean liners, hide from feuding families, befriend Brown Eyes and bluff his way toward a boxing ring, seeing modern filmmakers unpack Buster Keaton's filmmaking and stunt work makes all that apparent chaos look considerably more precise. The Stone Face may never tell you he's impressed with himself. A century of filmmakers can handle that part for him.