Невероятные трюки Бастера Китона

Totally devastated, he sits on the crankshaft of his locomotive. And then suddenly the train starts moving and enters the tunnel with a distracted Johnnie. "I was running the engine myself during the whole picture: I could handle that thing so well that I stopped it in an instant. But when this shot came, I asked the engineer if we could do it. He said, 'There's just one danger.' A fraction of excess steam and the wheel turns. And if it spins, it will kill you right then and there." We tried it 4 or 5 times, and in the end the engineer was satisfied that he could handle it.

So we went ahead and did it." FALLING FACADE "Steamboat Bill Jr." (1928) Keaton's most dangerous and famous stunt appears in his last independent film, "Steamboat Bill Jr." The film is filled with an epic scene of the destruction of the city by a hurricane, for which 6 airplane engines were used, so powerful that one day they blew a truck into the river. During a hurricane, the facade of a building collapses on an unsuspecting Willie Canfield, so he only survives. Keaton has used this miracle trick before: in Roscoe Arbuckle's short film "The Backstage," in his own short film "One Week," and in miniature, in "The Blacksmith," but never on such a truly deadly scale.

A wooden façade about 20 feet wide and high and weighing about 4,000 pounds was attached to the ground by hinges. K: "We placed this frame on the ground and built the window around me so that it had 2" clearance on each shoulder, the top clearing my head by 2" and the bottom by 2" above "My heels." We marked that area and drove large nails where my two heels would be. They put the front on it, painted it and made the serrated edge where it detached from the building." Four people on the roof simultaneously cut the rope, and the facade fell under the pressure of the wind and its own weight.

Keaton's widow Eleanor said that just before filming she was informed that his producer Joe Schenck was closing his K studio: "I was angry at the time, or I never would have done it. Two more women on the sidelines fainted, the cameramen They turned their backs on them and everyone on the set was scared... But it was a great scene." So are there any stunts that Keaton has been dubbed in? The only known independent films about him took place in the "College". After the long and expensive filming of "The General", the film had to be made quickly and cheaply, and although Buster himself was in excellent physical shape, in this frame he still replaces him. an understudy K.: "Only once did I use a double.

That's when I hired Lee Barnes, the world pole vault champion, to jump out of a second-story window. I couldn't do the scene because I'm not a pole vaulter." and I didn't want to spend months training to do the trick myself." Although Buster did something similar in "Three Ages", but there the trick does not require proper technique. In 1928, Keaton lost his studio and creative independence from it, and was forced to move to the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio, where, as one of the highest-paid stars, he was not allowed to perform dangerous stunts. But even there, in the movie "Baby Cyclone", Buster secretly performed a dangerous fall from the stairs for his friend Lew Cody, receiving up to $7.50 for it.

Despite the real danger of his stunts, the only injury that kept Keaton out of action for long was a broken ankle with a torn ligament on the set of "Electric House" in 1921. Buster's long shoe got stuck between the steps and He fell from the escalator to the studio floor from a height of approximately 10 feet, after which he spent more than a month in the hospital. Keaton lived safely until he was 70 and died in his bed from lung cancer. From the age of 17, Buster smoked like a steam locomotive, several packs of cigarettes a day. However, he exercised and swam every day for the rest of his life, remaining in excellent physical shape, and at any age he could perform acrobatic feats and risky falls.

At the age of 69, Keaton starred in the Canadian short film "The Railrodder." Despite chronic bronchitis, he pulled himself out of the cold waters of the autumn Atlantic, take after take, when the entire crew, wrapped in warm, wind-blown clothing, argued doggedly with director Gerald Potterton, defending the joke with a map invented by he. , which everyone considered too dangerous. Potterton: "He would be angry if you told him that standing on one foot on a speeder crossing a bridge in the Canadian prairies, considering that the floor is slippery due to the previous scene, could be dangerous. It scared us, because he was driving at a lower speed at 50 km/h, struggling with the road map and the strong wind, but he was Buster Keaton, and who the hell am I to tell him what to do?