The great­est of the silent clowns is Buster Keaton, not only because of what he did, but because of how he did it. —Roger Ebert

In 1987, Video mag­a­zine pub­lished a sto­ry titled “Where’s Buster?” lament­ing the lack of Buster Keaton films avail­able on video­tape, “despite renewed inter­est” in a leg­end who was “about to regain his right­ful place next to Chap­lin in silent comedy’s pan­theon.” How things have changed for Keaton fans and admir­ers. Not only are most of the stone-faced com­ic genius’ films avail­able online, but he has maybe eclipsed Chap­lin as the most pop­u­lar­ly revered silent film star of the 1920s.

Keaton has always been held in the high­est esteem by his fel­low artists. He was dubbed “the great­est of all the clowns in the his­to­ry of the cin­e­ma” by Orson Welles, and served as a sig­nif­i­cant inspi­ra­tion for Samuel Beck­ett. (He was the playwright’s first choice to play Wait­ing for Godot’s Lucky, though he was too per­plexed by the script to take the role). In Peter Bogdanovich’s new doc­u­men­tary, The Great Buster: A Cel­e­bra­tion, Mel Brooks and Carl Rein­er dis­cuss his foun­da­tion­al influ­ence on their com­e­dy, and Wern­er Her­zog calls him “the essence of movies.”

For many years, how­ev­er, the state of Keaton’s fil­mog­ra­phy made it hard for the gen­er­al pub­lic to ful­ly appraise his work. “The Gen­er­al, with Buster as a train engi­neer in the Civ­il War, has always been avail­able,” Roger Ebert wrote in 2002, and has been “hailed as one of the supreme mas­ter­pieces of silent film­mak­ing. But oth­er fea­tures and shorts exist­ed in shab­by, incom­plete prints, if at all, and it was only in the 1960s that film his­to­ri­ans began to assem­ble and restore Keaton’s life­work. Now almost every­thing has been recov­ered, restored, and is avail­able on DVDs and tapes that range from watch­able to sparkling.”

Access to Keaton’s films has fur­ther expand­ed as a dozen or so entered the pub­lic domain in recent years, includ­ing two fea­tures, Sher­lock, Jr. and The Nav­i­ga­tor, this year and three more to come in 2021. You can watch thir­ty-one of Keaton’s restored, recov­ered films on YouTube, at the links below, shared by MetaFil­ter user Going to Maine, who writes, “where, oh where, in this mod­ern world, can we find the gems of his gold­en era? The obvi­ous place.”

Keaton starred in his first fea­ture-length film, The Sap­head, in 1920. For the next decade, until the end of the silent era, he dom­i­nat­ed the box office, along­side Chap­lin and Harold Lloyd, with his can­ny blend of dare­dev­il slap­stick and every­man pathos. After the twen­ties, his career floun­dered, then rebound­ed. His last pic­ture was a return to silent film in Beckett’s 1966 short, “Film,” made the year of his death. Since then, Keaton appre­ci­a­tion has become almost a form of wor­ship.

In 2018, The Gen­er­al came in at num­ber 34 on Sight & Sound’s Great­est Films of All Time list. But the BFI’s Geoff Andrew argued that it deserved the top spot, and Keaton deserves recog­ni­tion as “not mere­ly the great­est of the silent come­di­ans,” but “the great­est of all com­ic actors to have appeared on the sil­ver screen… not only a great Amer­i­can film­mak­er of the silent era,” but “one of the great­est film­mak­ers of all time, any­where.” Andrew likens him to a god, but “unlike gods… Buster has the advan­tage of being able to make us laugh. And laugh. And laugh.”

Don’t we all need a steady sup­ply of that med­i­cine these days? See Keaton’s clas­sic silent com­e­dy The Gen­er­al fur­ther up and watch 29 more Keaton films at the links below. Many will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Short Films

One Week (Sep­tem­ber 1, 1920)
Con­vict 13 (Octo­ber 27, 1920)
Neigh­bors (Decem­ber 22, 1920)
The Scare­crow (Decem­ber 22, 1920)
The Haunt­ed House (Feb­ru­ary 10, 1921)
Hard Luck (March 14, 1921)
The High Sign (April 12, 1921)
The Goat (May 18, 1921)
The Play­house (Octo­ber 6, 1921) (This con­tains a faux min­strel show seg­ment with black­face.)
The Boat (Novem­ber 10, 1921)
The Pale­face (Jan­u­ary, 1922) (Racist depic­tions of Native Amer­i­cans)
Cops (March, 1922)
My Wife’s Rela­tions (May, 1922)
The Black­smith (July 21, 1922)
The Frozen North (August 28, 1922)
The Elec­tric House (Octo­ber, 1922)
Day Dreams (Novem­ber, 1922)
The Bal­loonat­ic (Jan­u­ary 22, 1923)
The Love Nest (March, 1923)

Fea­tures

Three Ages (Sep­tem­ber 24, 1923)
Our Hos­pi­tal­i­ty (Novem­ber 19, 1923)
Sher­lock Jr. (May 11, 1924)
The Nav­i­ga­tor (Octo­ber 13, 1924)
Sev­en Chances (March 15, 1925)
Go West (Novem­ber 1, 1925)
Bat­tling But­ler (Sep­tem­ber 19, 1926)
The Gen­er­al (Decem­ber 31, 1926)
Col­lege (Novem­ber 1927)
Steam­boat Bill, Jr. (May 20, 1928)

Bonus! Two of Keaton’s Last Films

The Rail­rod­der, for the Nation­al Film Board of Cana­da (Octo­ber 2, 1965)
Film, direct­ed by Samuel Beck­ett (Jan­u­ary 8, 1965)

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Super­cut of Buster Keaton’s Most Amaz­ing Stunts

Buster Keaton: The Won­der­ful Gags of the Found­ing Father of Visu­al Com­e­dy

List of Great Pub­lic Domain Films 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

As a long­time fan of all things Dune, there’s no liv­ing direc­tor I’d trust more to take over the “prop­er­ty” than Denis Vil­leneuve. But why remake Dune at all? Oh, I know, the orig­i­nal film—directed (in sev­er­al cuts) by “Alan Smithee,” also known as David Lynch—is a dis­as­ter, so they say. Even Lynch says it. (Maybe the nicest thing he’s ever said about the movie is, “I start­ed sell­ing out on Dune.”) Crit­ics hat­ed, and large­ly still hate, it; the film’s mar­ket­ing was a mess (Uni­ver­sal pro­mot­ed it like a fam­i­ly-friend­ly Star Wars clone); and the stu­dio felt it nec­es­sary to hand glos­saries to ear­ly audi­ences to define terms like Kwisatz Hader­ach, gom jab­ber, and sar­daukar.

But when I first saw David Lynch’s Dune, I did not know any of this. I hard­ly knew Lynch or his fil­mog­ra­phy and had yet to read Frank Herbert’s books. I was a young sci­ence fic­tion fan who saw in the movie exact­ly what Lynch said he intend­ed: “I saw tons and tons of pos­si­bil­i­ties for things I loved, and this was the struc­ture to do them in. There was so much room to cre­ate a world.” I did not know to be upset about his devi­a­tions from the books in the grotesque imag­in­ing of the Third Stage Guild Nav­i­ga­tor or the deci­sion to cov­er Baron Harkon­nen in bloody, ooz­ing pus­tules. The film’s impen­e­tra­bil­i­ty seemed like a fea­ture, not a bug. This was a world, total­ly alien and yet uncan­ni­ly famil­iar.

In hind­sight, I can see its many flaws, though not its total fail­ure, but I still find it mes­mer­iz­ing (and what a cast!). Vil­leneuve, I think, was in a very dif­fi­cult posi­tion in updat­ing such a divi­sive work of cin­e­ma. Should he appeal to fans of the books who hate Lynch’s film, or to fans of the clas­sic film who love its imagery, or to the kinds of the­ater­go­ers Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios feared would need a glos­sary to make it through the movie? Add to this the pres­sures of film­mak­ing dur­ing a pan­dem­ic, and you can imag­ine he might be feel­ing a lit­tle stressed.

But Vil­leneuve seems per­fect­ly relaxed in a recent inter­view above for the Shang­hai Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, and the trail­er for the new film has so far passed muster with every­one who’s seen it, gen­er­at­ing excite­ment among all of the above groups of poten­tial view­ers. As you can see in the video at the top, which match­es shots from the pre­view with the same scenes from the 1984 film, the new Dune both does its own thing and ref­er­ences Lynch’s dis­put­ed clas­sic in inter­est­ing ways.

No direc­tor should try to please every­one, but few adap­ta­tions come laden with more bag­gage than Dune. Maybe it’s a good idea to play it safe, anchor­ing the film to its trou­bled past while bring­ing it in line with the cur­rent size and scope of Hol­ly­wood block­busters? Not if you ask the direc­tor of the Dune that nev­er was. Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky intend­ed to bring audi­ences the most epic Dune of all time, and was relieved to find that Lynch’s adap­ta­tion was “a shit­ty pic­ture.” By con­trast, he pro­nounces the Vil­leneuve trail­er “very well done” but also com­pro­mised by its “indus­tri­al” need to appeal to a mass audi­ence. “The form is iden­ti­cal to what is done every­where,” he says, “The light­ing, the act­ing, every­thing is pre­dictable.”

Maybe this is inevitable with a sto­ry that film­go­ers already know. Maybe Villeneuve’s movie has sur­pris­es even Jodor­owsky won’t see com­ing. And maybe it’s impossible—and always has been—to make the Dune that the cult Chilean mas­ter want­ed (though break­ing it into two parts, as Vil­leneuve has done, is sure­ly a wise choice). Herbert’s vision was vast; every Dune is a compromise—“Nobody can do it. It’s a leg­end,” says Jodor­owsky. But every great direc­tor who tries leaves behind indeli­ble images that bur­row into the mind like shai-hulud.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Glos­sary Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios Gave Out to the First Audi­ences of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)

The Dune Col­or­ing & Activ­i­ty Books: When David Lynch’s 1984 Film Cre­at­ed Count­less Hours of Pecu­liar Fun for Kids

Moe­bius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness