THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 6, 1995 TAG: 9508040060
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARK MOBLEY, MUSIC CRITIC
LENGTH: Long : 127 lines
NINETY-NINE YEARS and six months ago, Harry Houdini watched the child of his vaudeville colleagues take a particularly spectacular fall.
According to legend, Houdini cried, ``That's some buster your baby took!'' One of America's finest filmmakers was named.
Buster Keaton kept on falling - first on stage with his parents, then in a series of increasingly virtuosic silent films that he wrote, starred in and directed. When sound arrived, his career declined somewhat, but he worked up until his death in 1966.
The upcoming 100th anniversary of Keaton's birth on Oct. 4 brings both national and local tributes. Kino International has released 30 Keaton features and shorts on videotape and laserdisc, including many movies that had been out of circulation for years. New scores for Keaton films by jazz guitarist Bill Frisell and his trio are available on Nonesuch CDs.
Today and Tuesday, Norfolk's Naro Expanded Cinema hosts its Keaton Centennial, a triple bill featuring live piano accompaniment by Norfolk native and Juilliard graduate Christopher Kypros. ``Go West'' is an improbable adventure story featuring a passionate friendship with a cow. The two-reel short ``Cops'' finds Keaton chased by hundreds of policemen and the surrealistic ``Playhouse'' has the comic in a dizzying array of roles.
``Keaton was in a class by himself among the comedians,'' said film restoration expert David Shepard from his home in Hat Creek, Calif. Shepard's Film Preservation Associates handled all the transfers of the Kino videos. ``There were films I had never seen before I started this project. I discovered there is a very high level of craftsmanship.
`` `The Playhouse' is an excellent example. There are nine multiple exposures in the scene where he's playing the whole minstrel line on stage. The unbelievable amount of effort - I don't think you could find a half-hour TV show that puts forth a measurable fraction of the production value Keaton put into these two-reelers.
The result is just as funny today as it was then. Shepard said that while he and his assistants worked in the studio, potential customers were touring the facility. ``We were all just having a wonderful time in there, and we really didn't become conscious of it until people started commenting on the fact that we had seen these films 40 times and and we were still laughing at them.''
Keaton's abilities as actor, director and editor were astonishing. Despite its very simple and often absurd situations, ``Go West'' touches on surprisingly rich emotions. Keaton plays Friendless, a broke drifter who pawns all his possessions - a quick scene of him buying back a small picture of his mother is heartbreaking.
Friendless jumps on a freight train, heading first to the big city and then landing on a farm. He is friendless no more after meeting Brown Eyes, a deeply soulful actress who happens to be a cow. Between her faithful companionship and Keaton's subtle gestures - not to mention his face, which looks like a cello sounds - the film has an unlikely truth that makes ``City Slickers'' seem like child's play.
Frisell's score captures this side of ``Go West'' brilliantly. His use of steel-guitar style chords and reverb mirror the movie's wide open spaces. Percussionist Joey Baron finds the right propulsiveness for train rides and accents for slapstick.
Shepard, whose credits range from transfers of silent classics to teaching at the University of Southern California, says he considered using Frisell's work on the Kino issues. Instead, Shepard went with more authentic orchestral and chamber scores.
Tracking down the music for the films was just one of Shepard's many tasks. ``There was hardly a film where you could open the can and there it was,'' he said. ``Of the 30 films, practically nothing went onto the tape as we found it.'' For ``Go West,'' he tracked down scenes not included in the version now shown in theaters. ``Cops'' was missing a scene that was discovered in the Library of Congress.
``The Playhouse'' did not have authentic titles - the written frames that explain the action in silent films. But Shepard did have the text for the titles, so he and his associates made new title scenes and used computer technology to make them look suitably scratchy.
Shepard, 55, discovered silent film as a child in New Jersey, after the father of a friend invited neighborhood kids for Sunday matinees from his film collection. One Sunday brought a special guest, Keaton himself, who happened to be appearing in a local summer-stock production.
Shepard said Keaton showed the children how he had suffered from stunts. ``He was just a mass of scars and healed fractures,'' Shepard said. ``In his style of filmmaking, he just puts the camera back and takes the most amazing stuff in the long shots without a cut.''
Kypros, too, is impressed by the stunts. ``It was so straightforward,'' he said while watching ``Go West'' in preparation for his performance. ``When he falls, he really falls.''
Kypros, 46, has played for Keaton's ``Seven Chances'' and other such silent classics as ``Birth of a Nation'' and ``Intolerance.'' Between his duties as a teacher at Norfolk Academy and organist and choirmaster at Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, Kypros prepares by watching the films over and over.
As he watched ``Go West,'' he pondered the comic possibilities of ``Some Enchanted Evening'' and ``Don't Fence Me In.'' His 9-year-old son Alex sang the milk jingle, ``Let's go out to the kitchen, let's go out to the kitchen .
``The fun part is when the audience is there,'' Kypros said. ``I enjoy listening to the audience behind me enjoying the film. All of a sudden we're all laughing together. That really says a lot for these movies, that unity of everyone enjoying these things no matter how old they are.
``When you think back and realize this thing is really old, and people are still getting off on it, that's really neat.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
``Go West'' features Keaton as a broke drifter who befriends a cow
named Brown Eyes.
Color photos
Kino International has released 30 Keaton features and shorts to
commemorate his 100th birthday.
New scores for Keaton films by jazz guitarist Bill Frisell and his
trio are available on Nonesuch CDs.
Pianist Christopher Kypros
Photo
KINO VIDEO
Buster Keaton starred in ``The General,'' a 1927 movie about a
stolen Civil War train.
by CNB