A reminder of Buster Keaton's greatness

Director Peter Bogdanovich expresses his love for Buster Keaton in a new documentary, The Great Buster: A Celebration. There are many reasons you might want to see Bogdanovich's fond look at a great star of the silent cinema whose career peaked in the 1920s but continued pretty much until his death in 1966. To begin with, Bogdanovich provides an outline of Keaton's showbusiness life, which began when his mother and father put him into their vaudeville act in the early 1900s. Young Joseph Frank Keaton -- reportedly named Buster by the great Harry Houdini -- quickly became a star vaudeville attraction. In a reedy voice, Bogdanovich narrates this tour through Keaton's work. He also includes interviews with Mel Brooks, Quentin Tarantino, Bill Hader, Richard Lewis, Johnny Knoxville, and Werner Herzog. But the movie's real delights arrive in the form of clips from the two-reelers that Keaton made in the early days of Hollywood and from the 10 features in which he starred and directed during the 1920s. These well-chosen clips make for a glowing tribute to Keaton's talents and serve as a reminder of just how inventive Hollywood could be during its earliest days. Visual comedy (now a truly neglected art) was a Keaton specialty which he approached with creativity, physical daring (his stunts are truly breathtaking), and unbridled individual expression. If highlights from films such as Our Hospitality, Go West, Steambath Bill, Jr., and, of course, The General don't improve your mood, nothing will.

A lost Orson Welles' movie sees the light

It has taken 48 years for Orson Welles' The Other Side of the Wind to reach the screen. Still unfinished when Welles died in 1985, the movie will show on Netflix beginning Nov. 2, also the date of its limited theatrical release.

The team that brought the film to fruition sifted through more than 100 hours of footage and consulted Welles' notes to make this cinematic mash-up. Why mash-up? Parts of the movie are in color, parts in black and white. To add to the sense of discombobulation, Welles filmed in 35 and 16 mm, as well as in Super 8.

I wish I could say that The Other Side of the Wind stands as a work of genius on a par with Welles' great work. Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil obviously come to mind, but this bit of Hollywood navel gazing has more in common with Welles’ docudrama, F is for Fake. Rather than a hidden masterpiece, The Other Side of the Wind opens a window into Welles’ mordantly disaffected consciousness. The movie seems to exist entirely in its own world.

The best I can say is that The Other Side of the Wind includes flashes of genius, images that rival the ambiguity, allure, and pretensions of Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni and splashes of humor that should appeal to those familiar with the films of the 1970s. A must-see for film buffs (whether they admire it or not), the movie may be of only marginal interest to the general public.

A brief synopsis: John Huston plays Hannaford, a director who's trying to finish a movie and who has been widely taken as a stand-in for Welles. Peter Bogdanovich, one of Welles' most ardent supporters, appears in the film as an up-and-coming director whose relationship with Hannaford becomes increasingly ambiguous. We see snippets of the film that's being made by Hannaford; it stars an often nude Oja Kodar, Welles' partner at the time.

Much of The Other Side of the Wind takes place at a party designed to raise money for Hannaford to finish his film, a task that won't be easy because his male star (Bob Random) has left the production.

Among the film's pleasures: Huston's ability to deliver a line with piercing authority. Brief appearances by Edmond O'Brien and Lilli Palmer also prove welcome.

The Other Side of the Wind can be confusing, insightful and, alas, a bit glib. Still, the opportunity to see a lost bit of film history doesn't come along every day. If you care about such things, you may exult in the parts of the film that reflect Welles' out-sized genius and suffer through the rest. I wouldn't be surprised if film enthusiasts disagree about which parts astonish and which leave one in a state of bemused indifference.

Hitchcock/Truffaut, an illuminating duo

A documentary that takes us inside the mind of a master.

Most serious film lovers are familiar with Hitchcock/Truffaut, a book first published in France in 1967. The book offered a meticulously edited version of a week-long conversation between two very different directors, Alfred Hitchcock and Francois Truffaut.

In this essential volume, Hitchcock not only reveals his ideas about cinema, but engages in detailed discussions of how he achieved some of his most notable effects.

Unlike many books, Hitchcock/Truffaut can be opened almost anywhere and still yield abundant rewards. Credit Truffaut -- who began his career as a critic for the vaunted French publication Cahiers du Cinema. Truffaut venerated and understood Hitchcock, and was intimately familiar with his work.

Now comes director Kent Jones's documentary of the same name, another essential work that either will serve as a welcome amplification for devotees of the book or an introduction to it for cinema newbies.

Using segments of the recorded conversation between Hitchcock and Truffaut, well-selected clips from Hitchcock's films and commentary by a variety of current directors, Jones has assembled a film that deserves to become part of every film lovers collection.

Happily, those commenting on the films are not the usual suspects, aside from director Martin Scorsese, who always adds something valuable to any film about film in which he appears.

Jones also includes insights from other directors, notably James Gray, David Fincher, Richard Linklater, Wes Anderson, Olivier Assayas, Arnaud Desplechin, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Peter Bogdanovich and Paul Schrader.

Of course, few can do a better job of describing Hitchcock's work than Hitchcock himself, and he does so with the kind of candor and generosity that he might only have been able to achieve with another filmmaker.

At the time of the book's initial publication, Truffaut hoped that a comprehensive look at Hitchcock's work would help change the view that some held of the "master of suspense." Truffaut believed that in the U.S., Hitchcock was regarded as a talented entertainer who made commercially successful thrillers. No more.

That view seems remarkably dated now: Few knowledgeable filmgoers would dispute the inseparability of Hitchcock's visual and narrative mastery, and most of us are willing to acknowledge that art and commerce needn't be irreconcilable enemies.

It's encouraging to hear a new generation of filmmakers talk about what they learned from watching Hitchcock's movies. Gray marvels at the perverse genius of Vertigo, for example.

But perhaps the best thing about Hitchcock/Truffaut is that it reaffirms what it means to take a serious approach to film -- not pompous, overly academic or self-impressed, but one that delights in rich analysis and deep appreciation.

As a result, Hitchcock/Truffaut provides us with abundant and durable pleasures.