Buster Keaton Saturday: "One Week" and "The High Sign"

Shorts from 1920 and 1921

Plot: "One Week" is about the week following the wedding of Buster and his blushing bride. They receive property and a house as a wedding gift. When they arrive, much to the chagrin of the man his bride turned down, they find out they have to assemble their house. It doesn't go very well. In "The High Sign," our hero gets himself a job in a shooting gallery at a carnival and joins a gang of criminals called the Blinking Buzzards. Eventually, Buster stumbles into a situation where he is hired to kill the man who just hired him as his bodyguard. Oh, snap!

Abbey: "I vote it a 20 because I liked it when Buster Keaton pulled a rope and the guy was on top of the hole and he fell down. I also liked when he kept going through the walls while the guy was chasing him. That house was funny."

Emma: "Dylan took my space on the couch. He's mean."

Dylan: "The chase scene was my favorite part. The first movie wasn't as good. Both of these movies had trains in them."

Jen: "Zzzzzzzzzzzzz."

Shane: "I believe I saw a nipple in "One Week"! These were both good, and both coincidentally had to do with houses and showed off Buster's engineering skills. Keaton had some kind of engineering degree, probably contributing to the zaniness of the houses in both of these shorts. Great sight gags and gadgets and slapstick with some funky little touches to fill in the gaps. "One Week" impresses with the relentless amount of comedy stuffed into 19 minutes. There was easily a feature-length film's worth of material and ideas in that one, but instead, it was rapid fire comedy that I really hated to see end. The physical comedy, as always, is great in both of these. There's a great chase/fight scene in "The High Sign" when the camera shows all four rooms of a house in which Buster darts around like a Warner Brothers' cartoon character and ingeniously disposes of the The Blinking Buzzards. Two very imaginative and mad shorts. And there was a nipple!"

No comments: