Tag: Buster Keaton

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This Film Is 100 Years Old

Sherlock Jr. (1924)

Sherlock Jr. is a mid-length Buster Keaton film (not quite a short, not quite a feature) that’s pretty much the platonic ideal of Keaton perfection really, full of technical invention, astonishing stunts, creatively staged chases, and lots of good jokes in between as well to tie it all together.

Plot wise here, Buster Keaton plays a daydreaming cinema employee who’s trying to impress his girlfriend. Unfortunately, some other arsehole is also trying to win her heart, but by nefarious means. Appalling!

Of course, this means he tricks everyone into thinking Buster’s an absolute disgrace of a man, even though obviously he’s not. But now he’s banned from seeing his girlfriend, forever. Poor Buster.

Anyway, after this traumatising event, he goes back to work, falls asleep, and then while dreaming climbs into the film he’s projecting, where he spends basically the rest of the film, having lots of fun.

Wonderfully, this film within a film isn’t a parody of some other film you haven’t watched (as is usually the case), but a parody of this very film you’re watching right now, which is nicely circular.

It also allows for a good fifteen minutes of non-stop action and chases at the end, as well as a pretty wonderful recurring joke where he repeatedly fails to recognise his sidekick in his various disguises (all of which are just him wearing a big moustache).

So yeah, I loved this. Hooray for 1924. It’s off to a pretty good start.

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Notes

1. I watched this on blu-ray, but as ever got the screenshots from youtube.

2. There’s a stunt/trick in the middle of this which is genuinely the best magic trick/special effect ever.

3. Which I won’t spoil here.

4. Cause I’m nice like that.

5. But it really is incredible.

6. And impossible.

7. Although like all the best tricks, its obviously a simple mixture of mirrors, trapdoors and some sort of portal to another dimension.

8. There’s also a bit where snooker is used for comic effect, which might be even more technically impressive somehow.

9. Who knew such a thing was even possible.

10. But turns out it was.

11. Briefly.

12. One hundred years ago.

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Film Information

Title: Sherlock Jr.
Director: Buster Keaton
Year: 1924
Duration: 45 minutes
Watch: youtube

Categories
This Film Is 100 Years Old

Go West (1923)

Go West is a 1923 silent comedy short, directed by Len Powers and featuring some chimps dressed up as people, albeit people with fake tails, as was the style at the time.

A father throws his useless wastrel son out of the house, so he hitches a ride on the railroad out west, holds up a clothes store, then gets lynched for his crime.

It’s quite the tale to tell in just under twelve minutes.

Luckily at the end it was all a dream, and the feckless young chimp man can go back to being a useless old drunk once again.

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Notes

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

2. Not to be confused with the 1925 Buster Keaton film of the same name.

3. Even though I only saw it because it was included as an extra with the 1925 Buster Keaton film of the same name.

4. Like all things with animals dressed up as humans, this was deeply unsettling and upsetting in almost every way.

5. Although the dog sheriff at least looked like he was having fun.

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Film Information

Title: Go West
Year: 1923
Director: Len Powers
Duration: 12 minutes
Watch: youtube

Categories
This Film Is 100 Years Old

Our Hospitality (1923)

Our Hospitality was the second full length feature Buster Keaton directed, a comedic retelling of the historical Hatfield-McCoy feud, but where most of the feud seems to involve falling off cliffs and being swept down rivers.

Unlike his first full length film (Three Ages, which was basically three short films edited together), Our Hospitality actually has a single full length story that runs through the whole thing. Here, after growing up in New York, Buster unwittingly returns to his home town and discovers that basically everyone wants to murder him, except for his faithful dog, and a girl he met on the train.

The first half hour or so of this is fairly sedate, the jokes being of the good natured but not actually that funny sort that elicit smiles rather than laughs, and if it wasn’t for Buster’s excellent dog brightening things up I’d say this section was kind of poor really.

Weirdly, the second half of the film forgets about the dog entirely, possibly because he’s no longer needed to save the show. Instead we get a non-stop sequence of almost pure Buster Keaton magnificence, stunts, action, charm and even actual funny jokes.

Which is nice (and very good).

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Notes

1. I watched this on blu-ray, where it looked amazing.

2. But grabbed the screenshots from youtube, where it looked less amazing, unfortunately.

3. I think I’m still struggling with the pacing of Buster’s full length films, where it seems they have roughly the same amout of jokes as his shorts, but spread out three times as thinly.

4. Saying that, the last half hour of this is a pretty breathtaking sequence of ever escalating events that presumably would never have been as amazing if it was squeezed down to the fit into a 25 minute shirt.

5. So what do I know, really.

6. Nothing, that’s what.

7. Also, this really does look beautiful in the blu-ray restoration version.

8. All these magnificent landscapes as wide as the screen can show

9. Which is not that wide, due to 4:3, but still beautiful.

10. This was the final film appearance of the wonderful Joe Roberts, who had a stroke during filming and then died shortly after (about a month before the film was released)

11. It was also the final film appearance of Natalie Talmadge, who didn’t die during filming but married Buster Keaton instead.

12. Finally, this was quite fun to watch simply because here I am in the 2020s watching a film made in the 1920s that’s set in the 1820s.

13. Hopefully this means that in the 2120s someone reviews this hundred year old review of this now two hundred year old film set in this now 300 year old time to complete this exciting sequence of events.

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Film Information

Title: Our Hospitality
Directors: Buster Keaton and John G. Blystone
Year: 1923
Duration: 75 minutes
Watch: youtube

Categories
This Film Is 100 Years Old

Three Ages (1923)

Three Ages is a 1923 Buster Keaton comedy where Buster falls in love repeatedly throughout time. This was the first full length feature he wrote and directed, although it’s only an hour, so not that full length, really.

This is basically the same story (Buster Keaton is in love, and must win his girl from the clutches of some nefarious rival) told three times across three different ages (hence the title), so we get Buster first as a caveman, then as a Roman, and finally as an American.

This is pretty good, with some pretty wonderful gags here and there, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as a lot of his other films. Maybe partly because this is parodying a film I’ve never seen (DW Griffith’s Intolerance), but also because a lot of it feels like remixes of stuff from other (better) Buster Keaton films.

Then again it does feature a stop motion Buster Keaton riding a stop motion dinosaur, and I wasn’t really expecting to ever see that.

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Notes

1. I watched this on amazon, but the screenshots come from youtube.

2. This was Buster Keaton’s first full length feature as a director/writer/etc. His first as an actor was The Saphead (1920).

3. Which is another film I’ve not seen.

4. Buster Keaton’s second full length feature as writer/directer/etc was Our Hospitality, released on November 19th 1923.

5. So I better watch that soon make sure I just about watch it in the week of release (plus or minus one hundred years).

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Film Information

Title: Three Ages
Director: Buster Keaton
Year: 1923
Duration: 61 minutes
Watch: youtube

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This Film Isn't 100 Years Old At All

The Balloonatic (1923) / The Love Nest (1923)

These films aren’t 100 years old at all! But I watched them anyway and nobody can stop me.

The final two Buster Keaton shorts, in The Balloonatic, Buster Keaton gets bored harassing girls at the park and becomes a stowaway on a hot air balloon, while in The Love Nest, Buster gets dumped by his girlfriend, so he sails out to sea in a sulk and becomes a whaler.

The Balloonatic is a bit disappointing really (not least because there’s less than a minute of balloon action, but upwards of 20 minutes of Buster pissing around slightly tediously by the river), and although The Love Nest is better, it’s definitely not one of Buster’s best (while still being pretty good fun).

And that’s all the Buster Keaton.

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Notes

1. I watched these on my trusty blu-ray set once again. I shall never see its like again.

2. These are the last two films on there.

3. And so I have broken my rules to watch them now rather than wait another ten months or so.

4. But I might actually review them properly next year.

5. Along with whatever else Buster got up to in 1923.

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Film Information

Title: The Balloonatic
Directors: Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline
Year: 1923
Duration: 25 minutes
Watch: youtube

Title: The Love Nest
Director: Buster Keaton
Year: 1923
Duration: 22 minutes
Watch: youtube

Categories
This Film Is 100 Years Old

The Electric House (1922)

After being mistaken for an engineer, Buster Keaton must electrify a rich man’s house, which he does by filling it with the most wonderful assortment of automated contraptions ever seen on film (or at least since various other Buster Keaton films already released).

The Electric House is quite similar to a fair few other Buster Keaton films (especially the haunted house sections of The Haunted House), and also reminded me of The Haunted Hotel and Hotel Electrique (not to mention Wallace and Gromit, due to the inclusion of a food delivering train set), but the whole things done with such flair and charm I didn’t really mind. I’m not sure I’ll ever really tire of pointless automated contraptions like this on film. Or Buster being scared of “ghosts”.

Not only that, but Buster, as always, knows that even the best of premises can be spiced up a little by the entirely superfluous addition of animals, so half way through we get the delightful appearance of these kittens watching a train of food go past.

Hooray for everything.

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Notes

1. I watched this on blu-ray. The screenshots are from a version on youtube.

2. There’s only two more of these Buster Keaton shorts left in the boxset, but they’re both from 1923.

3. So now I have to decide whether to keep to the premise of this website and wait a year to watch them, or break the entire premise of this website and watch them tomorrow because I have no self control at all.

4. Buster is such a temptress.

5. And I am so easily tempted.

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Film Information

Title: The Electric House
Directors: Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline
Year: 1922
Duration: 24 minutes
Watch: youtube

Categories
This Film Is 100 Years Old

Daydreams (1922)

In Daydreams, Buster Keaton must prove he’s man enough to marry a woman by taken on a series of jobs and showing her father he’s not too poor to provide for his wife to be.

The central framing of this film is that Buster, in his quest to actually hold down a job, writes letters home to his girlfriend telling her what he’s doing now. She then daydreams Buster being incredibly successful for a few seconds, before we get an extended sequence of Buster’s complete incompetence. Poor Buster.

This leads us to a series of vaguely related sketches in which Buster is a bad vet, a bad street cleaner, a bad actor, and finally a bad fugitive from the law, which I’m not sure is a job, exactly, but does mean we can get the obligatory Buster vs Cops chase scene to finish off the film (which here includes both an excellent surprise attack on a tram, and a wonderful sequence where he gets stuck on the paddlewheel of a steamboat).

The ending is surprisingly dark, too, with Buster being forced to commit suicide for his failures by his fiance’s father. Poor Buster indeed.

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Notes

1. I watched this on blu-ray, and grabbed the stills from this youtube version.

2. The restored version on the blu-ray is missing the first two daydreams of Buster in his job, which that youtube version has.

3. Although only as stills.

4. The restored version has a few extra minutes of stuff through the rest of it though.

5. Including a much longer paddle wheel section.

6. Which is wholly amazing and wonderful.

7. So if you can find a 24 minute version of this elsewhere you should watch that one.

8. In the hope that that bit’s all in there.

9. Also this is at least the second Buster Keaton film I’ve seen where he’s arrested for wearing a skirt (or maybe for not wearing pants, who knows)

10. I wonder if that was a common crime in the 1920s

11. Or just one of Buster’s greatest fears.

12. This film also contains the most astonishing dog I have ever seen.

13. As shown in the picture below.

14. I think that dog later appeared as an extra in The Dark Crystal

15. And if it didn’t it should have done.

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Film Information

Title: Daydreams
Directors: Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline
Year: 1922
Duration: 24 minutes
Watch: youtube

Categories
This Film Is 100 Years Old

The Frozen North (1922)

In The Frozen North, Buster Keaton plays around in the snow for a bit in this sort of western (with extended fishing interlude).

A parody of films I’ve never seen, but there’s still a lot of fun to be had here anyway, and it’s at least interesting to watch now just for the chance to see Buster Keaton changing his on screen persona from a lovable incompetent to a murderous arsehole (who is still, of course, incompetent), which is kind of shocking to see, really.

The ending, of course, provides him with mitigating circumstances for his behaviour, but the damage has already been done by then. I’m not sure I’ll ever recover from seeing Buster gunning people down in cold blood.

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Notes

1. I watched this on blu-ray again. The screenshots are from this near identical version on youtube.

2. The main target of The Frozen North’s parodic intent is supposedly William S. Hart.

3. But as I have never heard of William S. Hart I cannot confirm or deny.

4. But maybe I shall watch some of his films in an attempt to find out.

5. If there are any that still survive.

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Film Information

Title: The Frozen North
Directors: Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline
Year: 1922
Duration: 18 minutes
Watch: youtube

Categories
This Film Is 100 Years Old

The Blacksmith (1921/1922)

In The Blacksmith, Buster Keaton is a blacksmith. Which makes sense, I suppose (even if he wasn’t a goat in The Goat, or a boat in The Boat, and so on). Although he also seems to be a wheelwright, a farrier, and a car mechanic, too. Which makes slightly less sense, probably. Although is probably just further proof that Buster’s a very talented boy.

This one’s pretty rough, thematically at least, mostly just being a series of disparate sketches occasionally but not always related to blacksmithing. And although I wouldn’t say this is one of Buster Keaton’s best, I still enjoyed it a lot, especially the strangely charming scene where Buster has to get some shoes for a horse.

Which I liked a lot, I really did. I could not tell you why.

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Notes

1. I watched both versions of this on blu-ray. I captured the images from this version on youtube.

2. The Blacksmith has quite an interesting history.

3. For a long time it was considered completely lost, before James Mason found a copy of it in the loft of Buster Keaton’s old house, 30 years or so after Buster Keaton had last lived there.

4. This was assumed (unsurprisingly) to be the release version of the film, but after someone discovered another print of it about ten years ago, it turned out this was only a pre-release version.

5. This new version (released in 1922), has a few new sequences, omits some old ones, has a different start, and some tighter editing in places (I think).

6. The version I grabbed the screenshots from was the 1921 pre-release version.

7. Which is a lot worse than the 1922 actual release version.

8. And although there’s not actually that much that’s different between the two versions (maybe 3 or 4 minutes), it’s quite interesting watching them both just to see how much difference editing can make to the overall quality of things.

9. Unfortunately I can’t find this version on youtube, so you’ll just have to trust me on this.

10. Or buy the Buster Keaton box set I’ve been watching.

11. Which you should, because it’s wonderful.

12. Anyway, here’s an old article about the new version, with a minute or so of some of the new stuff embedded half way down.

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Film Information

Title: The Blacksmith
Directors: Buster Keaton and Malcom St. Clair
Year: 1921/1922
Duration: 22 minutes
Watch: 1921 version (full version); 1922 version (excerpts only)

Categories
This Film Is 100 Years Old

My Wife’s Relations (1922)

In My Wife’s Relations, Buster Keaton plays an effete taffy salesman who accidentally marries into a family of burly working class sorts. Misunderstandings and mayhem ensue.

I can’t say I particularly enjoyed this one. Comedies of manners aren’t exactly my thing, especially when they’re comedies of manners 100 years and 10000 miles away from any I really understand (what even is taffy?). But Buster has a consistently excellent series of exasperated expressions, there’s a pretty great dinner scene, and the restored ending is marvellous, with a perfectly staged escape from five floors up via numerous window awnings all the way to the ground, so it’s not an entirely wasted watch by any means.

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Notes

1. I watched this on blu-ray, and got the screenshots from this youtube version.

2. None of the youtube versions seem to have the restored ending, so I couldn’t get a shot of my favourite scene.

3. But it was pretty good I promise.

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Film Information

Title: My Wife’s Relations
Directors: Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline
Year: 1922
Runtime: 25 minutes
Watch: youtube