Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)
★★★ — Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)
There is a moment in Steamboat Bill, Jr. that stops you cold. A full house façade comes crashing down around Buster Keaton, and the only thing between him and a very permanent retirement is a single open window. He doesn't flinch. He doesn't dive. He just stands there, perfectly still, while the structure swallows him whole and spits him out the other side unharmed. No wires. No trick photography. Just a man, a wall, and a level of precision that makes your palms sweat even now, nearly a hundred years later. That one shot is worth the price of admission on its own.
The film surrounds that moment with a fairly thin premise. Keaton plays the slight, soft-spoken son of a gruff riverboat captain nicknamed Steamboat Bill, turning up to help run the family boat and immediately becoming a source of embarrassment to his old man. There's a romance with the daughter of a rival steamboat owner thrown in for good measure. It's a framework, nothing more, and it doesn't pretend to be anything else. The plot exists to get Keaton from one set-piece to the next, and honestly, that's fine. That's the deal you make with silent comedy.
What you're really watching is a showcase for one of the most gifted physical performers who ever lived. Keaton's deadpan expression, that famous stone face registering nothing even as the world collapses around him, is so perfectly controlled it almost reads as a superpower. His timing isn't just good, it's architectural. Every gag is constructed like a building: load-bearing jokes, structural supports, and then the moment the whole thing falls in exactly the right direction. You can see his influence everywhere. Jackie Chan has spoken about it openly. Modern action-comedy owes him a debt it hasn't fully paid back.
I've spent a fair bit of time with Keaton's filmography on this blog. The General remains his masterpiece for me, a film that manages to be simultaneously a breathless chase film and a quietly devastating portrait of a man desperate to prove his worth. Sherlock Jr. (1924) is probably his most formally inventive work. Steamboat Bill, Jr. sits a step below both, but it's still unmistakably Keaton, and that hurricane finale is arguably the single most audacious stunt sequence in his entire body of work.
The honest caveat is this: the film drags. At just seventy minutes it somehow manages to feel longer than that, and the middle section in particular tests your patience. The romance is awkward and repetitive, the misunderstandings pile up without building to much, and a handful of the gags simply don't land with the impact they probably needed even at the time. Part of this is the translation problem that affects a lot of silent comedy. Without sound, without rapid cutting, some sequences rely heavily on a comedic context and a performance register that can feel distant now. You have to lean in. Not everyone will want to.
So where does that leave it? Three stars feels right. The historical importance is undeniable, and Keaton himself is as compelling as ever, but the film around him isn't consistently strong enough to sit alongside his very best work. It's a film of extraordinary peaks and uneven valleys, and you'd be lying if you said otherwise.
Still, I'd tell anyone to watch it. Not for the story, not for the romance, not even really for the laughs, because it isn't wall-to-wall hilarious. Watch it for the man who stood perfectly still while a house came down around him, and who trusted geometry, preparation, and his own nerve to keep him alive. That kind of fearlessness doesn't have a year on it.
Three stars.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 1928 | Watched: 2025-11-26
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Artiflix
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Buster Keaton: The General (1926) · Our Hospitality (1923) · The Navigator (1924) · Sherlock Jr. (1924)
More with Buster Keaton: The General (1926) · Our Hospitality (1923) · The Navigator (1924) · Sherlock Jr. (1924)
More from the 1920s: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · The Docks of New York (1928) · A Throw of Dice (1929)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
More romance: The Eagle (1925) · The Last Picture Show (1971) · The General (1926) · The Docks of New York (1928)
