|
Cartesian slapstick, class of 1927. A rainy California sky welcomes the scholar (Buster Keaton) to his high-school graduation, "the curse of athletics" is the theme of a speech delivered in a damp, shrinking suit. (He stands before a tome as the seams in his crotch threaten to rip, "where would I be without my books?") Miss Popularity (Anne Cornwall) is not impressed, neither is the star jock (Harold Goodwin), they all meet on campus. "Well, if it isn't the student prince." The protagonist leans against a blank screen and behind it awaits an arena of body and intellect, the genius Rivette spoke of in Monkey Business is already here in spades. The vault pole that snaps in his hand, the javelin that spears the ground under his nose, the discus that slices the top hat of the Dean (Snitz Edwards). Choreography and movement are beautiful in any field: The soda jerk juggling ice-cream scoops is his own artist, elsewhere on the track the sprinting Keaton knocks down every hurdle but the last one, which he calmly topples to complete the image. "Bring me something you can't stick your thumb in," he's told at the restaurant, he produces a coconut and removes it like a rugby charger. (Backstage, the cooks critique his blackface guise with meat cleavers.) The serene mystery of baseball (cf. Kitano's Boiling Point), the umbrella out of Lautréamont finds its place in a lyrical gag involving a sudden change of camera speed. The Dean recalls lost love not unlike Bernstein in Citizen Kane and sends Keaton to the big rowing race, just the beginning of the decathlon for his sweetheart's hand. Four dissolves upend the happy ending, the admiration of Buñuel the young critic ("as beautiful as a bathroom") and director (Un Chien Andalou) resurfaces in Boorman's Zardoz, naturally. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |