Steam­boat Bill, Jr (1928)

The cam­eras were ready to roll, but most of the crew couldn’t bear to watch. Buster Keaton stepped onto his mark and wait­ed for the wall of the house behind him to fall. If his mea­sure­ments were cor­rect – and they usu­al­ly were – a win­dow should land exact­ly where he stood, leav­ing him unscathed amid the wreck­age. He had just two inch­es of clear­ance for his head and shoul­ders and the slight­est mis­cal­cu­la­tion would be fatal, but Keaton lat­er recalled feel­ing that he didn’t real­ly care if the house hit him or not. The day before they filmed this stunt he had received the news that his inde­pen­dent stu­dio was to be shut down and, against the advice of Char­lie Chap­lin and Harold Lloyd, he was about to sign a con­tract with MGM.

Keaton would make one more film that was recog­nis­ably his at MGM – the inter­mit­tent­ly bril­liant The Cam­era­man – before the stu­dio began exert­ing full con­trol over his projects, but if Steam­boat Bill, Jr was to mark the end of an era, at least Keaton ensured he went out with a bang. The cli­mac­tic storm that destroys the town and very near­ly destroys our hero is one of the most ambi­tious­ly con­ceived and bril­liant­ly sus­tained com­ic set-pieces in cin­e­ma, with Keaton’s jaw-drop­ping ath­leti­cism and endurance fre­quent­ly being put to the test as he is buf­fet­ed by gale-force winds and sent hurtling down debris-strewn streets. Keaton had orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed to end his film with a flood before a real-life dis­as­ter forced him to opt for a hur­ri­cane, ​“as a more rest­ful type of calami­ty to watch,” but there’s noth­ing rest­ful about the spec­ta­cle he puts on screen.

Steam­boat Bill, Jr has some­times been spo­ken of as a sec­ond-tier Keaton, just­ly cel­e­brat­ed for the cli­max but rarely dis­cussed in glow­ing terms else­where or classed along­side acknowl­edged mas­ter­pieces such as The Gen­er­al or Sher­lock, Jr. In fact, the full range of his bril­liance is on dis­play in this film, with the small­est and most keen­ly observed details often lead­ing to the most cher­ish­able moments. Has any screen actor ever been more expres­sive in their still­ness? The scene in which Keaton’s fop­pish city boy is ordered by his tough father to replace his beret with a prop­er work­ing man’s hat is one of the fun­ni­est he ever filmed, and all it con­sists of is him fac­ing the cam­era while try­ing on an eclec­tic range of head­wear and react­ing in his typ­i­cal­ly under­stat­ed fash­ion. It’s a mas­ter­class in com­ic tim­ing and dead­pan reac­tion shots, and a reminder that Keaton had few peers when it came to com­mu­ni­cat­ing with his eyes and the small­est of gestures.

Keaton’s whole body was an extra­or­di­nary machine and the film has him run­ning for his life and bounc­ing back from vio­lent prat­falls through­out. To watch this film is to watch a man repeat­ed­ly throw him­self into per­il for the sake of com­e­dy cin­e­ma, and per­haps there’s an increased sense of urgency to this per­for­mance with the knowl­edge that he would nev­er enjoy such free­dom again. In the chaos of that aston­ish­ing storm, Steam­boat Bill, Jr pro­vides us with one of the defin­ing images of this great star – a diminu­tive man poised at a 45 degree angle, brave­ly fac­ing into the fierce winds, and deter­mined to stay stand­ing even as his whole world col­laps­es around him.