10 Best Buster Keaton Movies, Ranked

Some people might find the idea of watching silent movies to be the cinematic equivalent of being forced to eat one’s vegetables. Being knowledgeable about film does inevitably necessitate being familiar with the history of the medium, and that involves going back about a century (or more) from time to time, to better understand how movies began, and thereby realize how they’ve changed.

The vegetable analogy isn’t entirely fair, though, because some creative people back in the 1920s or earlier were super talented and so ahead of their time that their works still stand out and prove entertaining. Buster Keaton is undoubtedly one such person, starring in and often directing (or co-directing) numerous classic short films and features, most of them during the silent era. His best work is ranked below, focusing only on feature films and not including movies where he only had a cameo (that’s why you won’t find Sunset Boulevard or It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World below, even though they’re both excellent).

10 ‘Battling Butler’ (1926)

Director: Buster Keaton

Battling Butler doesn’t start off as a sports movie, but it does eventually become one. It’s one of many Buster Keaton feature films that saw him approaching a fairly broad genre and putting his own comedic spin on it, with things working out relatively well here. It’s understandably not seen as one of Keaton’s very best efforts, but it certainly has its moment.

The non-sports-related stuff in Battling Butler is more ordinary comedic fare, but it might be better, with a man desperately in love getting mistaken for a boxer who shares his name, then pretending to be said boxer because he believes it will continue impressing the girl and her family. It’s a solid farcical set-up with enough decent gags spread throughout to make it a fun enough watch.

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9 ‘Go West’ (1925)

Director: Buster Keaton

While Battling Butler was Buster Keaton doing a boxing movie, Go West, released one year earlier, sees him bringing his sense of humor and offbeat charisma to the Western genre (to the surprise of no one, considering the title). It shouldn’t be mixed up with a Marx Brothers movie that shares the title, though, with that one also being a comedic Western romp.

Keaton’s Go West sees him playing a man trying to stay alive and thrive outside his usual city stomping grounds, working with cattle and becoming oddly attached to one particular cow. The bond he has with the animal is kind of sweet, and the finale – which involves a stampede going through a town – is pretty awesome. There are also plenty of funny/silly gags, the best of them often involving Keaton’s character’s ridiculously small firearm.

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8 ‘The Navigator’ (1924)

Directors: Donald Crisp, Buster Keaton

Plenty of Buster Keaton movies are now more than a century old, including The Navigator (and those classics that aren’t will be 100 relatively soon, given so much of his best work was made in the 1920s). The Navigator sees Keaton starring in and co-directing a comedic adventure movie, the plot of which involves a series of chaotic events happening at sea, centering on a man and a woman, the latter of whom has just turned down the former’s marriage proposal.

So, yes, The Navigator has got a bit of romance too. Many Keaton films have that element, though the romance isn’t usually sentimental, and is sometimes played for laughs. It blends several genres well, and clocks in at a very lean 65-minute runtime. Indeed, one of the best things about these Buster Keaton movies is how brisk and easily digestible they are, and it’s easy to marvel at how much is crammed into usually brief running times.

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7 ‘Our Hospitality’ (1923)

Directors: Buster Keaton, John G. Blystone

A madcap romantic comedy with a wonderfully twisted premise, Our Hospitality revolves around a romance between two people whose families have bad blood between them. Such a story might oftentimes be played for drama, but here, it’s an excuse to have a good deal of classic Keaton physical comedy, all in the name of staying in love and avoiding a woman’s violent family members.

It’s far from the only Buster Keaton comedy to heavily feature trains… the best was still to come, in that regard. But Our Hospitality is fun and, slightly sluggish opening aside, has a good deal of energy and humor when it counts. Our Hospitality also isn’t a full-on action film like some Keaton movies are, but there remain a few impressive stunts and set pieces here for those who particularly enjoy seeing that kind of thing.

6 ‘Seven Chances’ (1925)

Director: Buster Keaton

Seven Chances would make for a good double feature with the aforementioned Our Hospitality, as it’s another Buster Keaton romantic comedy. Also, given one’s just over 70 minutes and the other is just under 60 minutes, it’s honestly not too hard watching them together. Combined, they’re shorter than a good many films out there.

The premise here is peak simplicity and cleverness, with a well-implemented ticking clock in the form of Keaton’s character having to get married if he’s to inherit a large fortune from a relative… and the deal requires him to do so in a very short amount of time. Most of Seven Chances is Buster Keaton frantically running around and trying to fall in love with comically chaotic speed, and the movie itself is similarly frantic and non-stop. It’s easy to fall into this one and have a good time with the majority of it.

5 ‘The Cameraman’ (1928)

Directors: Edward Sedgwick, Buster Keaton

Though the advent of sound in cinema was revolutionary and changed things forever in some admittedly good ways, it was a shame that silent films seemed to go out of fashion entirely. Charlie Chaplin held on for a little while, making two (mostly) silent masterpieces in the 1930s – City Lights and Modern Times – but Keaton’s best work was generally confined to the silent era.

The Cameraman is thereby arguably his last great film as lead actor and co-director, with the premise following a photographer taking up a new job that sees him shooting newsreel footage. Keaton being a cameraman in the film and a director in real life gives the film some meta-commentary, further aided by the fact that Keaton’s character here is also named Buster. Both Busters had to adapt to a new kind of technology, and even with all the chaos in The Cameraman, the fictional Buster was probably more successful, sadly.

4 ‘Limelight’ (1952)

Director: Charlie Chaplin

Thanks to Limelight, there’s been a need throughout this ranking to say most of Buster Keaton’s best movies were contained in the silent era, and not all. This is because he has a supporting role in this 1952 film, and is generally quite good here, even if Limelight is more wholly a Charlie Chaplin movie, given Chaplin plays the lead role and also directed the film, and he seemed to put a lot of himself in here.

Limelight is incredibly bittersweet and strikingly moving, the latter especially so because it’s more of a drama than a comedy, whereas many other great Chaplin movies either balanced the two genres or leaned a little more toward comedy. It’s a film about troubled people in the world of entertainment trying to find connections and reasons to keep on going, playing out at a measured pace but eventually proving extremely rewarding for anyone after something surprisingly emotional.

3 ‘Steamboat Bill, Jr.’ (1928)

Directors: Charles Reisner, Buster Keaton

Alongside The Cameraman, Steamboat Bill, Jr. can be seen as something of a last hurrah for Buster Keaton; another classic silent movie released the year following the advent of the talkie. By the end of the 1920s, the transition was more or less complete, but the last couple of years of the decade did see a mix of silent movies and talkies, what with silent pictures still in production and technical difficulties also impacting those making films with dialogue.

Anyway, Steamboat Bill, Jr. is mostly about the strained relationship between a father and his son, and there are also a lot of comedic set pieces and a little by way of action, the latter generally found closer to the end of the movie. It’s not fully a drama necessarily, but it does have a little more sadness to it than one might expect from Keaton. Also, it’s the film of his that has the famous shot of the front of the house falling down and just missing Keaton.

2 ‘Sherlock Jr.’ (1924)

Director: Buster Keaton

When it comes to crowning one Buster Keaton movie as the best of the bunch, it usually comes down to two films, one of them being Sherlock Jr. This could well be his best if you’re looking for something absolutely relentless with non-stop creative gags, as the whole film is barely even feature-length, yet it doesn’t waste a second. At every point, you’re either getting set up for a joke or a pay-off, again and again and again.

Imaginative special effects sequences abound, and there’s lots of comedic mayhem with the premise here centering on a young man desiring to become a detective, though finding himself lacking certain skills to make that a reality. Sherlock Jr. is all about the jokes and the action. It’s no-nonsense and, if anything, the only complaint one could potentially have is that something so hugely enjoyable ends up being over so quickly.

1 ‘The General’ (1926)

Directors: Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton

Just getting the edge on Sherlock Jr. is The General, which is the other all-out masterpiece Buster Keaton made. If you only feel like you have the time for two movies of his and no more, you can comfortably make it this pair. In contrast to Sherlock Jr., The General is almost an epic, being a massive adventure movie on a scale that still feels impressive.

It’s also ambitious genre-wise, functioning as a Civil War movie, an action flick, a romance, and, of course, a great comedy. And though the stunts and set pieces are complex, the plot’s wonderfully simple: it follows a man trying to rescue both his train and the woman he loves from soldiers who steal the former and kidnap the latter. The General feels like it influenced so many action movies to come, being wonderfully ahead of its time to the point where, even almost 100 years later, it still has the capacity to wow viewers.

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