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- Production : United Artists - USA, 1927
- Length : 65 min at 24 frames/second
- Orchestration : 1st violin, 2nd violin, Viola, Cello, Double Bass, Clarinet, Bassoon, French Horn, Piano, Ukelele
Scenario :
Ronald is the brightest pupil in high school, except in sport. The prettiest girl in school, object of all the athletes’ attentions, warns him : she won’t reply to his advances until he has a sporting success.
Once at university, he tries every sport, hoping to find one in which he is not too useless…and it’s not easy !
The Director :
Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton (Joseph Francis Keaton nicknamed Buster, a name given to him by Harry Houdini) was born in 1895 in Pickway (Kansas) and died in 1966 in Hollywood. He was an American actor, director and producer. He was famous for his deadpan expression, and was called « the man who never laughs » in contrast to his famous contemporaries, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd.
He started his profession as a stage comedian at the age of three in his parents’ vaudeville acts. His movie career started in 1917 in silent comedies produced by Fatty Arbuckle. His career blossomed from 1920 to 1928 when he established his own company.
His 20 short films and his 12 feature films took him to the top of his profession. His masterpiece, « The General », 1926, is often cited as one of the greatest movies in the history of the cinema. But the loss of his studios and hence of his autonomy, together with the advent of the « talkies » dealt a fatal blow to his career.
Rediscovered by a new generation of cinema lovers in the 1950s and 1960s, Buster Keaton received an honorary Oscar in 1960 for the whole of his career.
The Composer :
Gabriel Thibaudeau
Born in 1959 in Beauharnois, Quebec, Gabriel Thibaudeau studied piano at the Vincent d’Indy Music School and composition at the Music Faculty of Montreal University. He also participated in summer schools at the Orford Arts Center where he worked on composition with Iannis Xenakis.
As permanent pianist at the Quebec Film Library since 1988, and recognised as the Canadian specialist in the accompanying of silent movies, he has been invited since 1991 to the Gionarte del Cinema Muto, in Pordenone and since 1992 to the festival Il Cinema Ritrovato, in Bologna, Italy.
Since 1993, among other works for the silent cinema, he has composed a quintet for brass and percussion for the film Straight Shooting, a concerto for piano and chamber orchestra for the film The Fall of the House of Usher, a sextet for the film Foolish Wives, and a Requiem for soprano and piano for the film The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. In association with the Octuor de France he has composed the music to accompany The Man who Laughs, Au Bonheur des Dames, The Iron Mask and Poil de Carotte, as well as adapting for the Octuor de France his orchestral score for The Phantom of the Opera.
