I had a friend at school who adored Keaton. That noble clown face, that relentless desire to find the next laugh. The clown who ended up becoming a muse to Samuel Beckett. In truth, clowns are always sadder and wiser than they pretend to be. To choose laughter is a philosophical standpoint. Keaton’s sad face always reminds us that no matter how funny the gag, there will be things in this world that will never be funny. It’s a shame that in amongst the beautiful underwater sequence, worthy of Méliès, and the disarming storm sequence, we also get prima facie post-colonial cannibals rocking up, but this was a different time. Keaton’s humour, like Chaplin’s is a critique of social structures and by implication a vindication of the little man, the underclass, the ones that are never going to become superheroes or millionaires. As such, it spoke to people in the western world who still knew what poverty meant, and reacted to someone who stood up for them. I can imagine my grandfather, 19 years old, watching The Navigator and finding its societal critique hilarious, an escape from the poverty of his Ipswich youth.
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