An amateur Italian filmmaker approaches a crowd in New York and happens upon a film shoot. It’s Buster Keaton, filming a scene from his final masterpiece: The Cameraman. At 33, Keaton was at the peak of his career and would have had no inkling that he was already on his way down. Why would it worry him? Falling was his speciality. He took his first tumbles in public in the music hall in 1899, aged four. His father, Joe, would hurl him round the stage, much to the terror of the audience. But when little Buster picked himself up, deadpan, showing no visible signs of pain, the public’s fear gave way to hilarity. A big personality was born. In 1917, Buster decided to go it alone. At 21, he became the youngest retiree from American music hall. In New York, he met Roscoe (alias Fatty) Arbuckle, a comedy filmmaker and actor who invited him to one of his shoots. The discovery of the process of filming, especially the camera, proved a revelation. Buster hopped aboard the train of the seventh art, going at full throttle. In the company of Stephane Goudet and Florence Seyvos, both Keaton specialists, we follow Buster’s development, in parallel to that of cinema; this artform, still in its infancy, was invented and grew up alongside him. At the same time, we explore the making of his films, his gags and stunts, and his own personal and intimate journey. Not forgetting the legend that Keaton himself nurtured, which was sometimes at odds with reality. Our portrait is one of aesthetics, timing, friendship, love, danger, social mobility, poetry and laughter. But also one of mistakes, betrayal, decline, oblivion, rediscovery, late recognition, of everything that made up the life of one of greatest geniuses cinema has ever known. It’s true, Keaton did keep falling down, only to keep getting up again.

Dante Desarthe