Seven Chances is a silent comedy from 1925, directed by and starring Buster Keaton, and based on a 1916 play by Roi Cooper Megrue.
Buster Keaton is a stockbroker who must marry a woman (any woman) before 7 o’clock this evening if he wants to inherit $7 million, which also seems to be the only way he can avoid financial ruin and possibly jail after “accidentally” committing some sort of massively fraudulent crime.
After annoying his sweetheart by revealing the machinations of the film’s plot to her, Buster has only 7 hours to find a new bride, and retreats to the local country club to chat up and proposition 7 local women, with a complete and unsurprising lack of success.
Luckily everything eventually spirals out of control and Keaton’s character finds himself caught up in an ever-escalating nearly 20-minute long chase scene that begins with him trying to outrun an army of potential brides in the middle of the city and ends with him being chased down by a mountain by hundreds of ten foot boulders. I assume this sequence wasn’t in the original play (although I’d quite like to see it if it was).
It’s an incredible ending, though, especially after the fairly sedate and ever so slightly boring first 40 minutes have lulled you into a false sense of security.
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Notes
1. I watched this on Mubi, although how long it’ll be on there I don’t know.
2. But you can’t take screenshots of films on mubi for some stupid reason, so I had to capture them from this version on youtube instead.
3. The first two-thirds or so of this is unfortunately marred by constant racist interruptions.
4. Which kind of under cut the charm of the whole thing to be honest.
5. The final 20 minute action sequence really is astonishingly spectacular though.
6. And almost entirely racism free.
7. Which is a bit of a relief
8. The first few scenes in this are filmed in early technicolor colour, too, which is nice (although then it reverts to Buster’s usual beautifully shot black and white)
9. There’s a real dreaminess to mid 20s technicolor films that I love.
10. As seen in The Black Pirate
11. An actual 100 year old film which I’ll review next week sometime hopefully
12. Doing this website’s only job on time for once
13. (1926 seems to be a good year for films, because I’ll get to watch The General and The Adventures Of Prince Achmed too)
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Film Information
Title: Seven Chances
Director: Buster Keaton
Year: 1925
Duration: 1 hour
Watch: youtube
