A Film Canon

Steamboat Bill, Jr. introduces an affective dimension - family - largely absent from Keaton's feature-length films, thereby subjectivising him in a manner that doesn't play to his strengths. That said, there is an extraordinary sequence in which the violent flux against which his slapstick tends to occur is made tangible, in the shape of a massive storm that ravages the small river port where his estranged father runs a dwindling steamboat business. Not only does this beautifully explicate the universe's tendency to reconfigure itself around Keaton - most famously in a scene in which an entire house wall falls on him, only to leave him unscathed because of his exact correlation with the position of the window - but it clarifies his peculiar ability to conflate stillness and movement, as he tries valiantly to walk against the wind. Interestingly, very little use is made of the titular steamboat itself - a strange decision, if only because the vessel is a more cramped, comic version of the Navigator - as if Keaton's potential devotion to it had been broken into two relationships; or, more accurately, a love triangle encompassing his devotion to his father, his father's (fairly underwhelming) devotion to the steamboat, and the steamboat's final willingness to cater to Keaton's requirements, as if recognising a fellow object, or machine.