BusterKeaton_vk

Ninety years ago, on January 10, 1935, the Paramount cinema in Paris hosted the premiere of Buster Keaton’s first French film, The King of the Champs-Élysées (Le Roi des Champs-Élysées), which also marked his first feature-length project after being fired from MGM almost two years prior. Today, this film is considered one of his best “talkies,” despite being made during a deeply troubled period in Keaton’s life, hastily, with limited funding, and with a crew he didn't know. Moreover, his voice was dubbed—something Keaton vehemently opposed—and in the film's final frames, breaking his cardinal rule, he even flashed his bright, truly Hollywood smile, a sight movie screens hadn't seen since 1920[1].

None of these unfortunate circumstances endeared the film to Keaton himself. He always considered The King of the Champs-Élysées a failure, saw “nothing good” in it, and years later strongly advised Raymond Rohauer, his devoted fan and business partner, against wasting time and money searching for a print of the picture. However, compared to Keaton's sound films made at MGM, The King stands out favorably: it has a certain charm and Parisian atmosphere (the Arc de Triomphe, narrow streets, and old buildings play their part), boasts a number of beautiful shots and successful gags, and Keaton’s character here is once again imbued with the touching vulnerability and resourcefulness of his earlier characters from classic silent films.

Since we're planning to present a copy of Sherlock Jr. preserved in the Gosfilmofond to the world in the near future — and, if all goes well, other treasures too (besides Sherlock Jr., the official Soviet film distribution lineup also included Our Hospitality, Three Ages, and The General, in that order) — let's take a moment to dive into the history of the Soviet fascination with Hollywood in general, and Buster Keaton in particular, to understand what these copies are and how they ended up there.

In many interviews over the years, Buster Keaton delighted in recalling that at one time he even surpassed Charlie Chaplin in popularity in "the most impossible country in the world" — Russia (then, of course, the Soviet Union). This was brought to his attention by the famous movie stars Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, who visited Moscow in the summer of 1926. Archival press studies reveal some truth to this claim. Just before the actors couple’s visit, following the triumphant Soviet screenings of Our Hospitality in the winter of 1926 and Three Ages soon after, Soviet audiences indeed fell in love with Keaton. Local film critics didn’t merely view his films as good entertainment, but admired them as high art, praising his acting style, subtle humor, and cinematic craftsmanship. However, Keaton also never forgot to note that despite his popularity, he received no financial benefit from it, because the Soviets allegedly used to get a single copy of his film from Germany for $5,000 and then just duplicate it for screenings all across the country. Let’s try to investigate how true this claim might be by delving into the history of Soviet film distribution.

Let's take a brief break from our discussion of "Sherlock Jr." for a little exclusive – a fragment from the MGM film "Switching to Hollywood" (Wir Schalten Um Auf Hollywood), created specifically for the German market. This fragment has been digitized from a 35mm print, which, to our amazement, we discovered in the Gosfilmofond. Remarkably, the archive not only holds a Soviet positive copy but also the original German negative. As far as we can tell, this film has never been released or published in decent quality before, although you can watch the full version in poor quality here.

This revue-style film was released by MGM in early 1931 and presented a compilation of scenes from the 1929 "Hollywood Revue," fragments from the unreleased film "The March of Time" and original footage, including this episode featuring Buster Keaton. The film's loose plot follows a German reporter (Paul Morgan) who had invented a wireless radio transmitter and travels with it around Hollywood, interviewing MGM stars. At the end of the film, Buster breaks his transmitter, bringing the broadcast to an abrupt end.

As you can understand from the previous post, it was "Sherlock Jr." that became my gateway into the world of Buster Keaton. To this day it remains, along with "The General" (and, in a close third place, "Our Hospitality"), my favorite. This incredibly clever and inventive film  still feels so modern that  after seeing it, a person, unfamiliar with silent film culture, once asked me in all seriousness if "Sherlock" was a modern stylization of turn-of-the-century cinema. And as befits a detective, this film has the most mysterious production story of all Buster's pictures.

Many books about Keaton mention that "Sherlock Jr." was initially titled "The Misfit" and was inspired by the Broadway play “Merton of the Movies”, the screen rights to which Buster, who saw the production during a visit to New York in the fall of 1922, wanted but was unable to acquire. For example, James Curtis, in the last, most detailed and considered definitive biography of Buster, states that "the impetus for "The Misfit" was almost certainly “Merton of the Movies" and cites this description of the upcoming premiere's plot from

Hello everyone, my name is Olga Egorova and this is a new, English branch of busterkeatonvk project. Some of you might already know me from our Buster Keaton discussions on Facebook, or perhaps you've come across our website, read our Instagram channel, or watched our Keaton videos on YouTube. Either way, I'm thrilled to welcome every reader, and here I will try to share something new and unique about Buster and his films that you won't find in any of his numerous biographies. For those of you who have never encountered our project before (or perhaps even Buster Keaton himself!) — here is our most popular video essay, dedicated to his stuntwork, narrated by none other than Buster's wonderful great-granddaughter, actress Keaton Talmadge:  

And I'd like to start here by sharing my own story of discovering Buster. In early 2019, not being a huge cinema enthusiast but loving everything unusual, I decided out of pure curiosity to explore a few early silent films. After watching Hitchcock's "The Lodger" and a few dramas, I wanted something lighter. Browsing IMDb's best comedies made before 1925, I stumbled upon "Sherlock Jr.," a film by an author I knew nothing about and had never heard of before. I watched "Sherlock Jr." on February 23, 2019, and was so captivated that soon all my free — and not so free — time was dedicated to Buster. I had never encountered a real-life character so astonishing or a life story so incredibly fascinating.