Silently steamin' into town

Iconic comic actor Buster Keaton (1895-1966) brings his noiseless shtick to Culpeper this weekend as part of a unique cultural event that sounds like a riot. New Yorker Ben Model, one of today’s leading silent film piano and organ accompanists, provides the soundtrack.

Saturday’s presentation of “Steamboat Bill Jr.” (Buster Keaton Productions, 1928) screens for free at 7:30 p.m. in the Library of Congress Packard Campus Theater on Mount Pony.

“Anyone looking for a couple hundred solid belly-laughs Saturday night will be treated to archival 35-mm prints from the Library of Congress’s archive,” said Model, silent film historian, composer and accompanist at New York’s Museum of Modern Art for the past 25 years.

Also producer of “The Silent Clowns Film Series,” a long-running Sunday afternoon film series in Manhattan, Model travels the country playing piano and organ to silent movies, improvising as he goes.

Model, 46, got hooked on silent cinema at age 3, according to his parents, when he discovered Charlie Chaplin. At age 12, Model — raised in upstate New York — befriended a well-known drama critic who for the next 15 years shared his collection of 16mm silents with the impressionable youth.

Model went on to study at New York University’s film school, training under the late Lee Erwin, a silent film organist in the 1920s. But Model never thought he’d make a career out of playing music for silent films.

“Remember, this is a line of work that ceased to exist in 1929,” he said.

Though the artistic medium is largely removed from common 21st century consciousness, Model believes silent cinema is now enjoying its second renaissance — the first being in the 1960s and 70s.

Increasingly, silents are being put on DVD, he said, and Turner Classic Movies. Once you see one, Model added, it’s easy to get immersed, especially considering the data-inundated world in which we live.

“The experience of seeing a silent film gives your right brain — deprived all day by a barrage of text messages, e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, you name it — a trip to an amusement park,” he said. “Your imagination is engaged much more than in a regular movie.”

Buster Keaton, aka “The Great Stone Face” — a reference to his deadpan demeanor — is said to be one of the best, if not the best, silent film comic of all time. Born Joseph Frank Keaton in Kansas to a couple of vaudeville performers, he lived his life on stage, making his debut at age 3.

A singer, dancer, pianist, juggler, ukulele player, magician, writer, director, technician and comedian, Keaton was knocked down, thrown through windows and dropped down stairs for years as part of his family’s vaudeville act. It was this early resiliency, in fact, that earned him the name that would stick.

Legendary magician Harry Houdini (1874-1926), his godfather, reportedly watched a 6-month-old Keaton tumble down a flight of stairs. And yet the baby was unharmed.

“What a buster kid you are,” Houdini is said to have cried out.

Keaton became a major silent film star in the ’20s and by 1928 had starred in numerous short films and features, his most famous being “The General” from 1926 based on a true Civil War story.

Though his act plunged into obscurity with the advent of talkies, Keaton realized a resurgence of popularity toward the end of his life and is certainly recognized today as a brilliant comedian far ahead of his time.

In fact, said Rob Stone, curator of the moving images section at the LOC Packard Campus, many would even place Keaton above Charlie Chaplin for comedic genius. Besides being known for his expressionless face, Keaton was also one of the most acrobatic of all the comedy greats, said Stone, former associate curator at the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

And there’s just something about Keaton that today’s audiences relate to more that Chaplin, added Model, contributing to a greater box office draw.

In “Steamboat Bill Jr.,” Keaton plays the son of a boat captain determined to train his kid for the high seas. But junior, arriving from Boston for a visit, resists, more interested in the daughter of his father’s rival.

“Very entertaining, of course,” said Mike Mashon, head of the moving images section at the Packard Campus. “The storm sequence at the end is one of the highlights in all silent film comedy. Heck, sound film comedy, for that matter.”

Prior to the main show, the LOC pulls a few shorts from its archives as well, including Ham and Bud’s “The Bogus Booking Agents” from 1916 and “Us” with Charley Chase from 1927.

The rare screening and cultural event is already on the radar of several out-of-town silent film enthusiasts, including some folks from the International Buster Keaton Society.

Plus, said Model, the LOC show provides an exceptional alternative to what’s playing at the Cineplex.

“I think these are the only comedy films being shown in the U.S. this weekend that do not have Seth Rogen in them.”

Want to go?
Reserve a free seat for “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” by
calling (540) 827-1079 ext. 79994 today from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Buster Keaton silent film screens Saturday night at 7:30 in the Library of Congress Packard Campus Theater on Mount Pony in Culpeper, with live music by Ben Model. Don’t have a reservation? Show up early to get on stand-by.