Description:

Keaton began his directorial career making two-reel shorts. He filled them to the rafters with chases and gags. These three early shorts find him caught between the devil and the deep blue sea as he pings back and forth between his angry father and his enraged, potential father-in-law in Neighbors and runs from anarchist gangs and the police in both The “High Sign” and Cops. Paradoxically both a star and a working-class performer, Keaton’s shorts portray a bluecollar world that puts little trust in liberal reformers, revolutionaries, captains of industry or middle-class managers. Introduced by the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art’s Interim Film Curator Will Schmenner.

Neighbors (Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline, 1920, US, 35mm, 18 min.) The “High Sign” (Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline, 1921, US, 35mm, 21 min.) Cops (Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline, 1922, US, 35mm, 18 min.)