Customer Reviews

Silent Echoes: Discovering Early Hollywood through the Films of Buster Keaton

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John Bengtson has done something so simple yet so essential to film history. If you live in LA the book will have a greater meaning. If not you can marvel at the almost film-archeological work Bengston has done in finding the exact places the great Buster Keaton filmed some of his best films.

Depending on your point of view, you might see this as a pointless exercise, or as an astounding accomplishment. I incline toward the latter view. This is a magnificent documentary on Keaton's work as well as a meditation on lovely, fantastic old Los Angeles as it fades into the past. Necessary reading!

The first time I went to Hollywood, I had this then-new book in my camera bag. If it weren't for this book I would have missed so many interesting spots from Buster's silent comedies. As I tooled up Hollywood Blvd, a street sign for "Cosmos" sounded familiar so I took out Bengtson's book and there it was; a picture of the building in front to my left was in the background of a few scenes in "Cops." Any silent film buff worth their weight in silver nitrate needs this book before they tour Hollywood!

I have had this book for over a year and I still look at it every once and a while. I love "then and now" books and this is really a great one. I was in LA this spring and I passed the statue that Buster was on to hide from the police. It brought the movie more into real life for me. Now when I watch Buster's movies I look for the scenes from the book. I would definitely get this book if you love Buster.

Silent Echoes is very detail oriented. You must be a serious Buster Keaton fan for this book. If you are, you will enjoy it. John Bengtson put an incredible amount of effort & research into this. Silent Echoes is filled with pictures from Buster's movies made in the 20's along with present-day pictures of the same locations.

Watching silent comedies, particularly those of Keaton, one can be lulled into a feeling that they take place in some parallel world, where it is always 1917-1928, people move faster, and the laws of physics are distorted so that men can jump through walls and cars can teleport. But as John Bengston reminds us in this invaluable book, Keaton's shorts and features were filmed in very real physical locations that still exist, and by searching them out provides not only a window on the past but a barometer of seven or eight decades of change. What Bengston has done here really requires a new name, as it combines the realms of photographer, 'urban archeologist,' archivist, geographer, and of course historian. His eye for architectural detail is acute, enabling him to pinpoint the location of a particular scene by triangulating (so to speak) between various photos and film shots, using one or two surviving details as reference points. The meticulous research that went into the book is daunting to contemplate, all to give the humble Keaton enthusiast a few hours of joy. Obviously, the book will fascinate fans of old Los Angeles as well, but I was particularly interested in the locations that went further afield. The General, for instance, was filmed all the way up in Cottage Grove, Oregon, in the greater Eugene area, while Steamboat Bill, Jr. was filmed in Sacramento, once a popular remote location during the silent era. Nabokov said that God is in the details and that is the reason for any and every Keaton fan to dive headlong into this unique, delightful, detail-obsessed book. Even the august Kevin Brownlow gives Bengston a tip of the hat, admitting in his forward that after scouting locations for his Keaton documentary---"despite all the resources of Thames Television and eager researchers, we did not find out nearly as much as Bengston did on his own." Could there be a better tribute?

Buster Keaton was a notorious stickler for detail in all of his film work. Buster's ghost was probably nodding his approval over the shoulder of John Bengtson as he painstakingly researched SILENT ECHOES, a tribute to the Keaton ouevre and a forever-lost Los Angeles. Bengtson juxtaposes stills from Keaton films with photos from modern-day L.A., showing in detail where Keaton filmed, virtually following his trail, from the shorts to the features. This book is a must for both film fans and historians.

John Bengston's book is an amazing testament to the wonders of Buster Keaton. It's a real treat to see the now and then photos taken with painstaking precision. When I recieved the book, I was taken in from the very beginning, I pored over every detail until my back hurt! The next day I picked it up to start all over again. This book is as close to going back in time as a person can get. One is able to picture Buster running down the street from Seven Chances and looking at the contemporary picture, you can think "Buster was here". I highly recommend this book, it will continue to fascinate for years to come.

John Bengtson has created a whole new genre of books. This book does not just explore the silent comedies of Buster Keaton. It also will allow the silent film fan to explore early Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other early movie locations in California, Arizona, and Oregon. It is amazing how Bengtson has located the buildings that were in the background scenery of Keaton's films. This book is a look at Los Angeles history, as buildings like the College of Dentistry and hotels that were houses of prostitution no longer exist. Now anyone can walk in the steps of the great comedian, Buster Keaton.

A piece of passionate, meticulous detective work, where the author has peered at the rooftops and groups of trees visible in the backgrounds of Keaton's classic films with the attention usually shown by CIA analysts pouring over satellite photos of Russian nuclear facilities. For all its straight forward earnestness, the book is really an act of poetic archeology, finding the shadows of a long lost magic Hollywood under the present day blandness. John Bengtson is like a benevolent stalker of Buster Keaton, 75 years after the fact. Beautiful, indespensible.