Abstract
This essay explores after-images of Buster Keaton’s stardom: first in the Hollywood biopic The Buster Keaton Story (1957), and second in the avant-garde short Film (1965), based on a script by Samuel Beckett. The Buster Keaton Story’s factual deviations from the former star’s biography reflect Hollywood’s anxious self-mythologization in a time of media transition. Film offers an alternative account of film history and of the perceptual dynamics of fading stardom. Set in 1929, Film is a travel back in time, but it is a time in which Keaton’s face and body show all the age of a ruined statue, worn down by an existence defined entirely by perception. Symptomatic of the turn away from Hollywood’s official myths, Film activates alternative remembrances of stars’ pasts.
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Notes
- 1.
Keaton was not Schneider or Beckett’s first choice for Film, other older comic stars (Charlie Chaplin, Zero Mostel) being considered as well as Jack MacGowran. Keaton, however, would come to be seen by both the film’s makers and critics as the ideal, retroactively perfect choice.
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Flaig, P. (2016). The Great Stoneface Ruined: From The Buster Keaton Story to Film . In: Bolton, L., Wright, J. (eds) Lasting Screen Stars. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-40733-7_10
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