Buster Keaton Collection
(1928-1930)
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Contents: The Cameraman (1928), Spite Marriage (1929), Free and Easy (1930), and So Funny It Hurt: Buster Keaton at MGM (200?).
Buster Keaton was convinced by those around him to break with independent film production and sign as a contract star with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer early in 1928. Keaton made his final two silent films for MGM before his sound feature film debut in 1930.
Keaton’s inability to cope with large studio control over his work and the studio’s misunderstanding of his onscreen persona led to an inevitable decline in Keaton’s creative output. Declining film profits and alcohol abuse crushed his film career in the 1930s. — Carl Bennett
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 2004 Warner Home Video edition
The Cameraman (1928), black & white, 76 minutes, not rated, with Spite Marriage (1929), black & white, 76 minutes, not rated, and Free and Easy (1930), black & white, 93 minutes, not rated, with So Funny It Hurt: Buster Keaton at MGM (200?), color and black & white, ? minutes, not rated.
Warner Home Video, 67009, UPC 0-12569-70092-5.
Full-frame 4:3 NTSC, two single-sided, dual-layered DVD discs, Region 1, ? Mbps average video bit rate, 192 kbps audio bit rate, Dolby Digital 2.0 mono and stereo sound, English language intertitles, English, Spanish and French language subtitles, chapter stops, plastic trays on cardboard wrap in cardboard slipcase, $39.95.
DVD release date: 7 December 2004.
Country of origin: USA
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This collection of Buster Keaton’s first three films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer also includes the modern documentary So Funny It Hurt: Buster Keaton at MGM by Kevin Brownlow. The overall quality is generally excellent, with improvements in the source materials for The Cameraman over MGM’s laserdisc and VHS editions from the 1990s.
For our full review of The Cameraman (1928), see our The Cameraman on DVD home video page; for our full review of Spite Marriage (1929), see our Spite Marriage on DVD home video page.
Also included as supplementary material is audio commentary by Glenn Mitchell, author of A-Z of Silent Film Comedy: An Illustrated Companion on The Cameraman; commentary by John Bengston, author of Silent Echoes: Discovering Early Hollywood Through the Films of Buster Keaton and Jeffrey Vance, author of Buster Keaton Remembered on Spite Marriage; and photo montages from the silent films.
USA: Click the logomark at right to purchase
a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.com. |
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Canada: Click the logomark at right to purchase
a Region 1 NTSC DVD of this edition from Amazon.ca. |
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