Steamboat Bill, Jr. / College
STEAMBOAT BILL, JR. was Buster Keaton s last independent silent comedy and also one of his finest. He stars as the effete son of a gruff riverboat captain (Ernest Torrence), who struggles to earn his father s respect (and the love of beautiful Marion Byron). But the film is best remembered for the climactic cyclone sequence a slapstick tour-de-force in which Keaton s comedic stunts are performed amid the full-scale destruction of an entire town.
A stone-faced response to Harold Lloyd s The Freshman, COLLEGE follows a frail scholar as he tries to win the heart of a girl (Anne Cornwall) through athletics. Keaton used his own physical agility to brilliant comic effect, as his character suffers a series of crushing failures. But the greatest surprise comes at the end, when the scrawny intellectual finally releases the physical tiger within.
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Steamboat Bill, Jr.
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College
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Supplements
- Audio commentary by film historians Michael Schlesinger and Stan Taffel
- Introduction by Serge Bromberg
- Vintage Alka-Seltzer commercial starring Buster Keaton
- Audio commentary for College by Rob Farr
- Tour of filming locations, by John Bengtson, author of Silent Echoes
- Introduction for College by Serge Bromberg
- Introduction for College by Lillian Gish
- Run, Girl, Run, a 1928 collegiate comedy starring Carole Lombard
- The Scribe (1966), Keaton's final on-screen performance