JustBusterKeaton

Between the years of 1933 and 1935, Buster Keaton lost it all. He lost his marriage (his first wife divorced him and took away his sons), his sobriety (he was by then a confirmed alcoholic), and his career (MGM, whose star roster he was on, fired him). Although Keaton was able to pull his life back together, he afterwards made do with what basically was gig work: Supporting roles in feature films, two-reel comedies at low-budget studios, gag writing at major studios, and spot jobs in theater, commercials, and TV. The work was steady, even a little lucrative, but...dare I say it...not a patch on his silent masterworks of the 1920s.

However, among this post-1933-1935 patchwork is an oddity—a 1934 film Buster made in France, titled Le Roi des Champs-Élysées. The film itself is a bit of a patchwork—its original producers lost funding, with a new company taking over; and its original, inexperienced director had to be replaced. The film was also in French (Buster's few lines of dialogue were dubbed); and Buster plays two roles—a naive aspiring actor and a ruthless gang boss. The former is mistaken for the latter, and from such situation the comedy springs.

No one would call Le Roi des Champs-Élysées a masterpiece (Keaton doesn't even name the film in his autobiography), and, compared to Keaton's 1920s films, it's minor in scale. But it was a starring role for Keaton (his last one, as it turned out), and it gives him the chance to act two separate characters, distinguishing between them with that still-amazing, still-accomplished body of his. And the film is Keaton, front and center; he's its motor, its springboard, its reason for being. No small thing. Find out more at my Grand Old Movies post here. It's like a stroll down the Champs-Élysées itself.

Buster Keaton in The Haunted House with added thirsty comments from Letterboxd