Sunday & Tuesday, July 8 & 10KidFest: Steamboat Bill, Jr. at Enzian Theater
Let’s be real: No modern kid is going to be excited about the chance to go see a black-and-white silent film made in 1928. So rest easy if you’re worried about being surrounded by kids at the Enzian’s screenings of Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill, Jr. this week. The plot, about feuding riverboat captains whose kids fall in love, is boilerplate melodrama, but the real attraction is seeing Keaton’s talent for physical comedy and death-defying stunts – all achieved without the benefit of modern-day camera trickery. And that makes the iconic scene in which the whole front of a building falls on Keaton, who’s spared by being in just the right spot for an open window to fall around him, still one of the most impressive – if completely foolish – stunts ever captured on film.
