Buster Keaton: Anarchitect

Every time, this machinery of movement takes him to and from another architectural enclave and, despite some of his most acclaimed films —such as Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928) and The General (1926)— focusing on his exchange with transportation, the rest of this piece will be spent looking at how Keaton used the built form in his craft. To Keaton’s mind, this baroque engineering could be taken to any object —whether it be to give it functions outside of its programmed use, or to combine it with other things to produce a new arrangement for domestic space. Throughout his film career, which ranged from short comedies working for Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle (1917-20) through to Samuel Beckett’s experimental work Film (1965) and his final performance in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), Keaton was known for his “great stone face”.

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