Category: This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

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This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

The Bell Boy (1918)

The Bell Boy is the seventh Fatty Arbuckle/Buster Keaton collaboration (or at least the seventh surviving one), and probably the best yet, in which the pair of them play Bell Boys at a dysfunctional hotel.

The plot of this is basically that Fatty Arbuckle is utterly bored at work and decides to piss around. It’s a pretty good plot, to be honest, and beats the usual Fatty Arbuckle storyline, where he’s just relentlessly unpleasant for 20 minutes for reasons I find difficult to discern.

It’s also an almost non-stop cavalcade of jokes (including an incredible window cleaning gag from Buster Keaton), with a nice line in slightly surreal humour, and some good use of pulleys and contraptions too, which I always like (though nothing on the scale of the stuff Buster Keaton contrives in The Scarecrow)

Towards the end, they run out of hotel jokes and stage a bank robbery instead, presumably so Buster Keaton can show off his incredible range of acrobatic skills. There’s a five minute fight, followed by a motorbike chase, and a runaway tram. It’s pretty exciting.

THE END

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Notes

1. I watched this on blu-ray yet again. The stills are captured from this youtube version.

2. I liked this one a lot, although it’s still probably only the third best hotel based silent film I’ve watched this year, after these two wondrous marvels.

3. This one also has a (very short) stop-motion sequence (I think), so keeps up the hotel/animation theme of The Electric Hotel and Hotel Electrique, even if only for about a second.

4. Also there’s a shaving scene, but rather than being pretty delightful, like the one in Hotel Electrique, this one is just utterly interminable.

5. And probably the only part of this I actually disliked.

6. This might also be the first Fatty Arbuckle film I’ve watched where he’s not just an absolute arsehole.

7. Which makes a nice change of pace.

8. And also the scene where he and his girlfriend drive around in a car for a bit reminded me of this bit from the new Twin Peaks for some reason.

9. Which was nice.

10. (This one also had a brief shot of a dog in it but it wasn’t Luke the Dog at all unfortunately it was some other dog entirely)

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Film Information

Title: The Bell Boy
Director: Fatty Arbuckle
Year: 1918
Duration: 25 minutes
Watch: youtube

Categories
This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

Out West (1918)

Out West is another 20 minutes of silent comedy directed by and starring Fatty Arbuckle, with able support from Buster Keaton. This one sees Fatty Arbuckle indulging in all the staples of the Western – vagrancy, theft, murder, train top chases, gunfights, bar brawls, extreme racism that’s incredibly unpleasant to watch, casual participation in genocide, and everything else that was the style at the time.

Yeah, this one takes a turn for the unpleasantly racist halfway through, and no amount of horses getting drunk can save it after that, to be honest.

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Notes

1. I watched this on blu-ray again, which was in plain normal black and white.

2. But I captured the screenshots from this tinted version on youtube.

3. This one also stars Buster Keaton’s dad near the start.

4. But beyond that I don’t have too much to say.

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Film Information

Title: Out West
Director: Fatty Arbuckle
Year: 1918
Duration: 20 minutes
Watch: youtube

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This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

Coney Island (1917)

In Coney Island, Fatty Arbuckle and his usual gang of friends go to Coney Island for the day. Hijinks ensue.

This one is a lot of fun and there’s a lot to enjoy in it, not least simply looking at Coney Island a hundreds year ago, which looks magnificent. The downhill dodgems on an undulating Mario Kart style track looks especially amazing.

I also liked this sullen looking baby eating an ice cream quite a bit. The true essence of all summer holidays there in one wonderful picture.

Beyond the wondrous nature of Coney Island itself, this short has a lot more in it that I liked than the last few I watched. I liked, in no particular order, Fatty Arbuckle’s incredible swimming technique; the occasional well-placed piece of fourth-wall breaking; Fatty Arbuckle eating an entire scoop of ice cream in one go; Buster Keaton doing a back flip just because he can; and Buster Keaton’s sheer unbridled delight at accidentally smacking Fatty Arbuckle in the face with a hammer.

Even Luke the Dog turns up for a bit. And at the end Buster Keaton kisses a girl.

I would quite like to Coney Island, a hundred years ago.

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Notes

1. I watched this on blu-ray again. The screenshots are captured from this copy on youtube.

2. The music on the Blu-Ray version was pretty rubbish, unfortunately.

3. I should probably try syncing it up with this Godspeed You Black Emperor track at some point.

4. But I’d probably get my youtube account blocked for copyright violations

5. So maybe some other time, who knows.

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Film Information

Title: Coney Island
Director: Fatty Arbuckle
Year: 1917
Duration: 25 minutes
Watch: youtube

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This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

Oh, Doctor! (1917)

Oh, Doctor! is another Fatty Arbuckle/Buster Keaton collaboration. This time Fatty Arbuckle plays a reckless, feckless doctor caught up in a complex (or at least convoluted) plot involving gambling, hustling, theft, and seduction, while Buster Keaton plays his dandyish son.

I can’t really think of much to say about this, I’m afraid. It was amiable enough, and at least it tried something different, rather than relying on Fatty Arbuckle’s usual staple of filling up any spare five minutes with everlasting food fights.

Also I liked this joke quite a lot, though I’m not sure exactly why.

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Notes

1. I watched this on blu-ray again. I captured the stills from this slightly grubby version on youtube.

2. This was a marked improvement on yesterday’s viewing, though it still lacked any stand-out scenes

3. I’m missing Luke the Dog quite a lot right now.

4. Hopefully he turns up again soon.

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Film Information

Title: Oh, Doctor!
Director: Fatty Arbuckle
Year: 1917
Duration: 24 minutes
Watch: youtube

Categories
This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

His Wedding Night (1917)

His Wedding Night is the third Fatty Arbuckle/Buster Keaton collaboration of 1917, and by far the worst so far. This one involves Fatty Arbuckle making an egg cream, indulging in mild racism and homophobia, date raping a woman, and sticking his head up a horse’s arse.

I did not like this one at all, although Buster Keaton looks quite fetching in a wedding dress.

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Notes

1. I watched this on Blu-Ray again. I grabbed the screenshot from this youtube version.

2. Which appears to be the same as the version in the boxset, actually, with the same soundtrack.

3. I was going to be as charitable as I could and say this was “of its time”.

4. But it’s not really.

5. It’s just a bit shit.

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Film Information

Title: His Wedding Night
Directors: Fatty Arbuckle, Buster Keaton
Year: 1917
Duration: 20 minutes
Watch: youtube

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This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

The Rough House (1917)

The Rough House is another Fatty Arbuckle silent comedy, co-diected this time with Buster Keaton, and starring pretty much the same cast as The Butcher Boy.

The first half of this is very similar to the first half of The Butcher Boy, being as it is a near ten minute ever-escalating food fight with the exact same cast of actors, but this time in a nice posh house rather than a butcher’s shop.

In the second half, Fatty Arbuckle has to make dinner for some new guests who turn out to be crooks. This section is surprisingly tedious, although there’s a nice bit where he slices up the potatoes using an electric fan (see above).

Later on there’s a chase, and a gunfight, and Buster Keaton executing an amazing overhead kick to a man’s face that Jackie Chan would have been proud of (see below). And yet it’s still all a bit boring for some reason.

(The reason is there’s no Luke the Dog at all)

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Notes

1. I watched this on blu-ray again, but took the screenshots from this version on youtube.

2. The restored version on the blu-rays looks much nicer than that. You can actually see their faces, for one thing.

3. So I apologise for the poor quality images above.

4. Maybe one day I will learn how to take screenshots from blu-rays, but I doubt it’ll be anytime soon.

5. I’ve said this before, but I love the way old silent films shot on static cameras like this have the feel of some strange 80s/90s adventure games, each room in the house a separate screen.

6. I don’t know if anyone’s ever made a silent comedy adventure game but someone definitely should at some point.

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Film Information

Title: The Rough House
Directors: Fatty Arbuckle, Buster Keaton
Year: 1917
Duration: 20 minutes
Watch: youtube

Categories
This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

The Butcher Boy (1917)

The Butcher Boy is a silent comedy from 1917, written, and directed by Fatty Arbuckle, and starring Fatty Arbuckle, too, as well as Alice Lake, Buster Keaton, and Fatty Arbuckle’s amazing dog, Luke.

I love Luke.

Anyway the film’s in two parts. The first part is set in the butcher’s shop where Fatty Arbuckle works, while the second part involves Fatty Arbuckle dressing up as a girl so he can break into a boarding school for girls and marry a girl.

The second part has more Luke but less jokes. The first part has less Luke but more jokes. I could not tell you which I prefer.

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Notes

1. I watched this on blu-ray, in this excellent collection of Buster Keaton films.

2. But there’s plenty of version available on youtube or wherever. I captured the above screenshots from this slightly shoddy version.

3. This was Buster Keaton’s film debut, which explains why it’s in the Buster Keaton boxset and not a Fatty Arbuckle boxset, I suppose.

4. Anyway, I’m going to watch one of these every day during December.

5. I hope that’s okay.

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Film Information

Title: The Butcher Boy
Director: Fatty Arbuckle
Year: 1917
Duration: 24 minutes
Watch: youtube (various versions)

Categories
This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

Various short films of waves breaking by the shore (1895-1902)

These waves have been crashing
on indistinguishable shores
for a billion years
and will
for four billion more

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Notes

1. I love waves.

2. And watching waves.

3. These waves are all over a hundred years old.

4. Lovely waves.

5. Anyway, there’s shots from ten different films here, all of which I watched on the BFI Player.

6. The first film, and the earliest, is Rough Sea At Dover, from 1895.

7. Which apparently fueled a boom in scenes of the sea.

8. For which I am forever grateful.

9. The second one is Breakers, from 1896.

10. It’s only 20 seconds long but it’s lovely.

11. With a good selection of hats.

12. Ship At Sea, from 1898, and Four Warships In Rough Seas (thought to be from 1897, but tagged 1900 on the BFI site) are two nice early examples of the pleasures of mouting a camera on a ship and letting the rise and fall of the sea around them induce seasickness in you from afar.

13. Also for some reason Four Warships In Rough Seas Sea contains at least six warships.

14. Presumably due to some sort of military misinformation campaign.

15. Sea Breaking Against Some Rocks (1898) and Rough Seas Breaking On Rocks (1899) are astonishingly atmospheric depictions of the scenes described by their titles.

16. Which is nice.

17. I love them both quite a lot.

18. And could watch them for hours rather than these scant minutes.

19. There then follows two films called Rough Sea, both from 1900.

20. Rough Sea #1 has a brick harbour wall in it.

21. And Rough Sea #2 does not.

22. If you absolutely need to differentiate between the two.

23. Mostly I included these ones for completions sake.

24. (I don’t know where the comma in completions sake should go so I’m leaving it out entirely)

25. Rough Sea At Roker (1901) is two minutes of not particular rough seas at all.

26. I’ve seen bigger waves at Clacton.

27. I’ve eeen bigger waves at Southend.

28. But it’s still strangely comforting to watch.

29. And the seas do look slightly rougher in the second minuter than the first.

30. I’ll give them that.

31. The final film is Waves At Southport, from 1902.

32. The first minute or so of this contains possibly the most sedate waves ever captured on film.

33. But the second half cuts to a cacophony of seagulls.

34. Seagulls being rougher than all the seas combined.

35. They’ll eat the flesh from your bones

36. And then the bones from your flesh

37. Until there’s nothing left for you to give.

38. I’m too scared to look at any more seas now.

39. So let this be the end

40. Of this little adventure.

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Film Information

Title: Rough Sea At Dover
Year: 1895
Director: Birt Acres
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Breakers
Year: 1896
Director: Henry William Short
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Ship At Sea
Year: 1898
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Four Warships On Rough Seas
Year:1897, or maybe 1900
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Sea Breaking Against Some Rocks
Year: 1898
Director: Charles Goodwin Norton
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Rough Seas Breaking On Rocks
Year: 1899
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Rough Sea
Year: 1900
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Rough Sea
Year: 1900
Director: James Bamforth
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Rough Sea At Roker
Year: 1901
Director: Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon
Duration: 2 minutes
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Waves At Southport
Year: 1902
Duration: 3 minutes
Watch: BFI Player

Categories
This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

The Haunted Hotel (1907) / Hôtel Électrique (1908)

The Haunted Hotel (which was directed by J. Stuart Blackton and released in 1907) and Hôtel Électrique (which was directed by Segundo de Chomón and released in 1908) are two variations on almost exactly the same theme (that theme being haunted hotels, where everything inside moves around in marvellous stop motion ways).

The Haunted Hotel mixes live action, stop motion (and pixilation) animation, as well as a bunch of other film trickery techniques, to create a series of short scenes where a weary traveller is haunted first by his dinner, then by a napkin, and finally by the entire room itself. It’s wonderful. Especially the end.

This is one of the oldest surviving stop motion films (some of the same director’s earlier attempts are among the many lost), but it’s not only remarkably technically adept, but pretty funny too (I laughed at least three times in six minutes, which is fairly good going I reckon).

The Haunted Hotel was so successful in Europe that apparently every film maker in France spent the next year trying to work out all of Blackton’s techniques (according to wikipedia, at least), which is presumably how Segundo de Chomón’s Hôtel Électrique came about.

Hôtel Électrique copies the basic template of the first film, but upgrades the setting from some dismal single room to a plush, posh French hotel, at the cutting edge of modernity. No expense is spared in providing the guests with the luxuries deserving of their class. Suitcases are unpacked, shoes are shined, hair is brushed, faces are shaved, all in perfect stop motion.

In this film, though, it’s not ghosts pestering people, but electric automation. What starts off as smoothly gliding suitcases and carefully swirling razor blades devolves into chaos when the inevitably of technological failure rears its head and everything turns to horror. The only thing to do is escape with your lives.

It would be another 80 years until Stanley Kubrick remade these two films as The Shining. Never once did he admit his inspiration.

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Notes

1. I watched both of these on youtube

2. The Haunted Hotel here

3. And Hotel Electrique here

4. The picture quality on both is disappointingly terrible

5. Which is a shame

6. I don’t know if there’s better quality versions available elsewhere

7. But I assume there must be, because the gif of the woman having her hair brushed in Hotel Electrique on wikipedia looks utterly marvellous

8. Although maybe that’s simply because it’s been squidged down to almost nothing

9. I watched an earlier J. Stuart Blackton cartoon previously on here

10. Although it was so awful I hid it in the comments rather than give it any prominence on the main part of the article.

11. But The Haunted Hotel is so excellent I have forgiven him now

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Film Information

Title: The Haunted Hotel
Director: J. Stuart Blackton
Year: 1907
Duration: 7 minutes
Watch: youtube

Title: Hôtel Électrique
Director: Segundo de Chomón
Year: 1908
Duration: 10 minutes
Watch: youtube

Categories
This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

A Woman Undressing (1896)

A Woman Undressing is apparently the oldest known piece of British film erotica. Filmed in 1896 by Esmé Collings, it is almost exactly a minute of a woman undressing, although, such was the clothing style at the time, that’s still not enough time for the woman to actually get undressed.

I very much like the matryoshka element of the display, dresses under skirts under dresses, some sort of Hadean nightmare where no matter how many layers you remove you’re never any closer to getting ready for bed.

So wonder she sits down and sighs at the end. She’s probably got another fifteen slips to remove before she can leave.
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Notes

1. I watched this on the BFI site as usual.

2. I was somewhat afraid to google for alternate links

3. But it turns out it was okay

4. Although the youtube version I found has the world’s worst musical accompaniment.

5. When obviously it should have been this

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Film Information

Title: A Woman Undressing
Director: Esmé Collings
Year: 1896
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player; youtube