The most emotive actor ever

Many years ago I remember seeing a similar meme to this starring Mischa Barton, using the same photo of her looking blank in various emotional situations, but that was done with clear ill-will to paint her as a limited performer. Buster Keaton, of course, was a man of stone and not wood, “the great Stone Face”, but this meme really is more of a tribute to him. The really funny thing, with hindsight, about his very early stuff with Roscoe Arbuckle is that he actually does emote in them, sometimes even broadly:

…as you might be able to see in this still from 1917’s Coney Island. However, before long Keaton realised there was a lot more humour to be had from a stoic lack of overt expressiveness in the face of extreme circumstances…

…which he’d elevated to a fine art by the time he did this in The General in 1926. And this scene, with a train engine making its implacable way along the tracks and sweeping Buster up while he’s trying to sweep away the railroad ties being thrown at him to halt his progress, arguably isn’t even the most extreme circumstance one of his characters faced (albeit certainly extreme for himself, given the engine could’ve easily derailed if the stunt went wrong).

But Keaton’s greater genius was in maintaining the non-reactivity, and I think that’s what marks him out as a great performer more than just a stuntman (though he was a great one of those too) or clown, in similar fashion to how Lon Chaney was a solid actor as well as a master of make-up (I mean, he had to be in order to sell some of the characters he played). It must’ve taken great skill to not just lose all composure in some of the situations Keaton placed himself in, whether to burst out laughing as he does in the Coney Island scene (and which he wouldn’t have done just a few years later) or to go wide-eyed hair-on-end freakout a la Harold Lloyd…

…which the character in The General could easily have done (at multiple points). And I think that in the end is what narrowly elevates Keaton above Chaplin for me. I’ve come to a much greater appreciation of the latter over time (mostly after realising just how terrible the prints of the Mutual comedies that were available on VHS here in the early 90s actually were; Chaplin is a lot funnier when he’s played at the right speed in a print where you can actually see details) and both him and Keaton are obviously necessary viewing (as is Lloyd, though I do consider him a bit of a step down from those two), but I still give Keaton the pole position. Alas that his real-life situation by the end of the 20s required more than just the stoicism of his characters…