Buster Keaton in College, 1927
“Much has been said about technique in films like Metropolis and Napoleon. No one ever talks about technique in films like College, and that is because the achievements are so indissolubly mixed with other elements that we aren’t even aware of them, just as we don’t give thought to the strength ratings of the building materials for a house we are living in. The super-films serve as a lesson to technicians; Keaton’s films give lessons to reality itself, with or without the techniques of reality.”
—Luis Buñuel, “Buster Keaton’s College,” Cahiers d’art, no.10, 1927, reprinted in An Unspeakable Betrayal: Selected Writings of Luis Buñuel, University of California Press, 2000
Robert Hommet in Un Chien Andalou, Luis Buñuel, 1929
That is indeed all kinds of awesome. And “College” is one of my favorite Keatons, with one of the greatest of all endings (that John Boorman borrowed for the brilliant-of-another-sort, “Zardoz.”)
Having seen both Keaton’s BATTLING BUTLER and David Mamet’s REDBELT, I’ll vote for the former influencing the latter in terms of the similarity of the climactic fight scenes.