Comedy shorts from 1921-1922
Here are the next six of Buster Keaton's shorts after he was on his own.
"Hard Luck"
This film was considered lost until 1987. It's another one of those shorts that you can divide into two distinct halves, but this time, one half is much better than the other. In that better first half, Buster's character has been driven to suicide, and there's some fun, albeit darker humor as he tries to take his life.
The second half of the film has him joining an expedition to search for an armadillo. At that point, things meander. Joe Roberts pops in as "Lizard Lip Luke," but it seems like it's just because Joe Roberts wanted to be in the movie and they had six minutes to fill.
There are some funny moments. A fishing scene works, and watching Buster get started on a giant horse or later rowing a horse across a river is funny enough. But I wish the entire 21 minutes or so would have focused on Keaton's character trying to commit suicide in various ways. I guess I'm dark like that.
The ending, by the way, is especially wacky. I believe it was lost even after a big chunk of this short was found. Keaton claimed it was the "greatest laugh-getting scene" of his entire career. It reminded me of something I saw in a Looney Tunes cartoon once or twice.
You know who else is in this movie? Bull "Fucking" Montana, the ape man from The Lost World! I also noticed that he was in When the Clouds Roll By, that great Douglas Fairbanks comedy I watched for a Silent Saturday a few months ago. That completes my unplanned, completely accidental Bull Montana trifecta.
"The Goat"
This short contains my favorite Buster Keaton shot--an approaching train with a stone-faced Buster sitting on the front. Gorgeous!
The plot of this one features a bit of mistaken identity, and it's one of his best shorts. You've got his first great chase scene, and there are so many funny and creative bits of comedy stuffed into it. Keaton shows that he was a stud athletically and a genius with his ideas. Directing traffic, hiding under a car, putting his coat on over a post, a mustache disguise, a random ghost, a horse sculpture, an escape from an operation. This has more ideas packed into ten minutes of police chasing than most silent features have for their duration.
There's also a great use of irony in this one. There's an ironic horseshoe toss that gets things rolling, and a great bit of irony when he goes to his love interest's house for dinner. The ensuing elevator chase and the movements involved with that show a terrific use of a set.
Another sequence I really love from this one involves Keaton waiting in line for food. It's a funny idea anyway, but Keaton really sells it with his body language.
If you've never seen a Buster Keaton short, this isn't a bad one to start with.
"The Playhouse"
What's better than watching one Buster Keaton on screen? How about thirty of them! That's the appeal of "The Playhouse" in which special effects and a whole lot of creativity are used to show a whole bunch of Busters on stage at a minstrel show or in the pit playing a variety of instruments. He even plays a couple of women and a child in the audience and even a monkey.
Highlights include a synchronized dance with himself.
Apparently, a line about "this Keaton fellow" seeming "to be the whole show" was a dig at Thomas Ince, a contemporary who generously credited himself in his film productions. I don't know who that is.
Anyway, the first half of the film is terrific with all these Busters. The second half involves a pair of twin love interests, both played by Virginia Fox, and it's not quite as successful. There's also a little person.
Though some blackface dates this, you have to appreciate how Buster Keaton was inventing a a special effect here, something he wouldn't reveal to other filmmakers for years and years. Man, this guy was good!
"The Boat"
I play fantasy football, and in the league that I've been in the longest, my team name has been Damfino. That's a reference to this movie where the titular boat is called Damfino. There's a little Shane trivia for you. It's also the name used by the International Buster Keaton Society.
Buster plays a family man in this one, and he's married to Sybil Seely once again. In fact, this is apparently a sequel to "One Week." He shows that he takes care of children about as well as he builds houses.
What I love about this character is how he can be simultaneously very clever and extremely inept. He's got no business taking his family out on a boat or probably even owning a boat in the first place. At the same time, he shows a little ingenuity in overcoming certain problems.
What Keaton was never inept with was making movies, and he squeezes a whole lot of clever from a small boat. This has two great shots where he's sinking. One is where he's standing stone-faced on the prow; the other has him sitting and sinking until only his hat remains. Classics! There's some ingenious set design throughout with this boat, and I imagine the water stuff was all done in a studio. It all seems pretty expensive. He borrows Chaplin's rocking from "The Immigrant" but adds an extra joke or two as punchlines to make the whole thing his own.
Two things I noticed: 1) There's a sound joke in this one, clever for a silent movie. I'd say more, but I don't want to. 2) You have to lip-read the final joke, and it's perfect.
If you've read this far, let me know in the comments if you want to hear about the wet dream I had involving Sybil Seely.
"The Paleface"
This one offends my liberal sensibilities. I'm not even sure Native Americans burned people at stakes. At least it's a happy ending for the Native American characters.
This one starts super serious, and Buster Keaton doesn't even make an appearance until around the 3 1/2 minute mark where he's trying to punch a butterfly, something else that offends my liberal sensibilities. There's some fun dramatic irony as he wanders through an Indian camp, and watching him put together a suit of fireproof asbestos or wear a feather in his porkpie hat is almost funny. The highlights involve three fun special effects and a gnarly tumbling stunt down a cliff. Otherwise, there's not a whole lot to see here. And you liberal snowflakes will be offended.
Big Joe Roberts plays an Indian chief, naturally.
A swastika makes an appearance in an Indian blanket that he wears.
"Cops"
You might have enjoyed seeing Buster chased by a couple cops in "The Goat." Here, he's chased by about a hundred cops. And yes, that's as glorious as it sounds!
This opens with a funny visual gag that also works as foreshadowing before diving into a story with Arbuckle-like plot development. Keaton then travels through town with a wagon full of shit, ending up disrupting a parade of policemen with some accidental terrorism and leading to what is arguably his most thrilling chase sequence where he showcases that athletic prowess and tons of slapstick and stunts. There are so many cops!
There's a joke involving a horse and a "goat gland specialist" in this. I had to do a little research on "goat gland specialists," and it's made my life just a little bit better. Apparently, there's a 2016 documentary about a goat gland specialist named Dr. Brinkley. It's called Nuts!, and it looks like something I need to see.
Despite the far-fetched plot of this one, it's yet another that wouldn't be bad to watch if you've never seen a Buster Keaton short. Along with "The Goat" and "One Week," it's one that I've shown students.
It does have sort of a depressing ending though, a little different than most other Keaton films.
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