The New Pictures

The Buster Keaton Story (Paramount). The policeman circled the object suspiciously. Its face looked like something that had crawled up through the collar and died. On top of it, as though to keep the flies off, sat a filthy felt skimmer the shape of a garbage-can lid. The soup-stained Ascot tie was asserted by a simple clothespin. The black serge suit was sizes too small and green with experience. The slap shoes were as big as cantaloupe crates.

The policeman fingered his chin. Should he take the thing to jail or to the city dump? And then all at once it started running. In an instant the entire police force was in hippopotamous pursuit. Horses bolted; pedestrians bounced like skittles. But just as the long arm of the law was on his shoulder, the fugitive took a flying leap at the tummy of a startled fat lady. As he hit head first, her midriff split up the middle and swung inward like saloon doors. The fugitive plunged through--and disappeared.

Such was the comedy of Buster Keaton, the granddaddy of deadpan and one of the four or five masters of the sight gag produced by Hollywood during the silent days. In the sequences adapted from the old two-reelers, these gags prove as good as ever they were, and provide the public with about ten minutes' worth of belly-shaking fun. But when this earnest little biopus turns from Keaton's silent comedies to his noisy domestic tragedies, the guffaws turn to unmitigated guff. Donald O'Connor, who plays the title role, does pretty well with the pratfalls, but when it comes to imitating Old Sourpuss, he ought to go soak his head in the pickle barrel.

Torero! (Manuel Barbachano Ponce; Columbia). For every pound of bull fought, there has been a ton of bull thrown. The virtue of this picture, made in Mexico, is that it tells in plain words and simple pictures what a bullfight is like to the man who knows bullfights best: the bullfighter.

It is a hell of a way to make a peso.

The point is made by describing a day in the life (and. with the help of flashbacks, a life in the day) of Luis Procuna, a 33-year-old Mexican matador who in the last 18 years has killed 1,324 bulls, and has survived innumerable gorings. On the day of the corrida, the matador gets up early to wet a finger to the wind. "If the wind lifts your cape," he explains, "you've got the bull in your lap." Then he has breakfast: nothing heavier than consomme and an orange, so that the surgeon, if need be, can operate tidily. Then he pulls on his suit of lights (traje de luces), says a grim goodbye to the wife and kids, puts flowers on his mother's grave, pops into the back of his limousine and starts down the last, long mile that leads to the moment of truth.

As the mile rolls by, the camera forebodes the future by reviewing the past: a cinemontage in which the bull again and again tears into the matador like a clumsy headwaiter working over a tossed salad. And with the climax prepared, the script provides some parting philosophy. In a bullfight, the bull is the least of the enemies the matador must face. Far more dangerous is the many-headed monster in the stands--most matadors are gored because the crowd is bored. But the mortal, final enemy of every bullfighter is his own fear, confronting him in the absolute form of the great black bull. And how is that fear to be conquered? By pride--Spanish pride. The script quotes the great Manolete: "It is not hard to conceal your fear when you are more afraid of appearing ridiculous than of dying."

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