OUR HOSPITALITY + Keaton Shorts “The Scarecrow” and “Neighbors”
$8.00 (member) ; $13.00 (general admission)
Ticket prices include a $2.00 online booking fee.
Aero Theatre | Introduction by author James Curtis.
Book signing of Curtis’ BUSTER KEATON: A FILMMAKER’S LIFE begins at 6:30pm. In partnership with Larry Edmunds Bookshop.
Restorations by Cohen Media, done in conjunction with Cineteca di Bologna.
This is a vaccinated-only screening.
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ABOUT THE FILMS
“The Scarecrow” (1920, 19 min. Dirs. Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton.)
Buster Keaton considers the matter of courtship and marriage in the American heartland. A pair of roommates (Keaton and Joe Roberts) vie for the hand of a neighbor girl (Sybil Seely) as her devoted dog (the marvelous canine thespian Luke) gives chase.
FORMAT: DCP
“Neighbors” (1920, 19 min. Dirs. Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton.)
Buster Keaton explores the same themes of courtship and marriage as in THE SCARECROW, but this time in an urban setting. The scene is the constricted space between two tenement houses, clotheslines overhead and a gated fence dividing the common yard. The girl (Virginia Fox) has a hostile father (Joe Roberts) and the boy’s old man (Joe Keaton) is no help at all.
FORMAT: DCP
OUR HOSPITALITY, 1923, Cohen Media, 73 min, USA, Dir: John G. Blystone, Buster Keaton.
Willie McKay (Buster Keaton) heads south to claim an inheritance and finds himself in the middle of a decades-long feud on the order of the Hatfields and the McCoys. Having fallen for the beautiful Canfield girl (Natalie Talmadge), he innocently puts his life on the line when he accepts a dinner invitation from Joseph Canfield (Joe Roberts) and his murderous sons. Keaton’s previous feature, THREE AGES, was, by his own admission, three two-reel films cut together. But if THREE AGES represents a transitional and somewhat uncertain bridge between shorts and features, OUR HOSPITALITY is a mature work of visual storytelling, richly textured and combining the comic and the tragic so deftly it marked an astonishing advancement for a man who had been directing his own movies for just three years.
FORMAT: DCP
Film Notes by James Curtis
