STEAMBOAT BILL, JR.

DIRECTOR: Charles Reisner
WRITER: Carl Harbaugh
STARS: Buster Keaton
SUPPORTING PLAYERS: Ernest Torrence
1928, approx. 71m

Playing with short, ONE WEEK (1920) -- Buster and
bride construct a pre-fab house with purposely scrambled instructions...35mm print.

"Buster Keaton's beautiful 1928 comedy equates parental rejection with the most violently destructive forces of nature; behind the elegant slapstick is an eloquent fable of survival. Buster is a beret-clad college boy abruptly reunited with his long-lost father, the fierce, bearish captain of a Mississippi riverboat (Ernest Torrence). The father's attempts to make a man out of his boy lead with perfect emotional logic to the famous final sequence, in which Buster rides a tornado that rearranges his town as he walks through it. Charles Reisner is the director of record, but the mise-en-scene is unmistakably Keaton's own." -- Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

SHOWTIMES: 3:30, 6:45*, 10:10 (*live piano accompaniment at this show)

CO-FEATURE: THE PATSY and short ONE WEEK

Links:

• Northern California Movies STEAMBOAT BILL JR Page