Keaton has never been forgotten, but he has been comparatively neglected. That comparison is, obviously, with Chaplin. Now some points seem clear. As performer, Keaton is certainly Chaplin's equal. As director, he is Chaplin's superior, more flexible in his camera movement, more sensitive to pictorial quality as such. As producer of whole, organic works, he is not quite as good as Chaplin. As manager of his career, he is not remotely in Chaplin's league. Chaplin had great business and promotive sense; Keaton had practically none. (p. 20)

Artistically, there are close similarities and wide differences between them. Both understood the body as the source of comic life, both had incredible control of their bodies—an identification of physicality with comic performance that may never be seen on stage or film again…. Both understood that mere physical miracle was eventually sterile, that it had to be used in support of a character, a basically fixed character, as in the ancient tradition of clowning. In Chaplin's earliest shorts, one can see him moving toward the Tramp. In Coney Island, where Keaton supports Fatty Arbuckle, one can see him moving toward his character. (And, incidentally, disproving the myth that he never smiled.) Both pantomime artists dreaded the coming of sound, and neither was at his best in speaking roles. (p. 21)

The differences between them are also interesting. In a primary but not exclusive sense, Chaplin is balletic, Keaton acrobatic. It would not be Chaplin's best style to do the skip across a table, over a man's shoulders, and the dive headfirst out a transom that Keaton does in The Goat. Keaton would not have done the globe dance in The Great Dictator. Intrinsic to Chaplin's silent films is an unheard music, to Keaton's the unheard sound of daily life. Chaplin's recurrent images are the theater and the road, Keaton's are boats (Balloonatics, The Navigator, Steamboat Bill Jr.) and trains (Our Hospitality, Go West, The General). Many of Chaplin's long films have better structures than Keaton's: Chaplin would never have let a film run ten minutes or more, as does Our Hospitality, before we get the first hint that it's a comedy. Most of Keaton's pictures are more obviously carpentered together than most of Chaplin's; they build toward a big climax, but they also deliberately delay it, filling in with comic figurations. Most Chaplin films are works of genius. Most Keaton films are vehicles for a genius. (pp. 21-2)