Tag: Fatty Arbuckle

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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 Playhouse (1921)

In The Playhouse, Buster Keaton is trapped in a theatre and must perform for us all, forever (until the end, where he gets married for some reason).

Apparently Buster Keaton made this one with a broken ankle, so relies more on his vaudeville background than any particularly elaborate stunts, with the majority of the film having the feel of an episode of The Muppets, with Buster’s various acts going increasingly wrong to the consternation of the cast and crew and the amusement of the audience.

A lot of this is very similar to the previous Buster Keaton/Fatty Arbuckle film, Back Stage, which is also set in a theatre and has an incredibly similar back stage set. But Fatty Arbuckle never sets his fake beard on fire, so I think this one’s probably better overall.

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Notes

1. I watched this on blu-ray again. The screenshots come from this youtube version.

2. The bit at the end of this, where an obvious mannequin comes flying out of the shattered mermaid tank, is strangely reminiscent, in a sort fo reversed way, of the bit at the end of A Nightmare On Elm Street, where an obvious mannequin gets pulled backwards though a window.

3. The first section of this, in which Buster Keaton plays ever actor on stage, every musician in the orchestra, and every single person in the audience, is pretty astonishing.

4. The multiple exposure stuff is flawless, and technically amazing considering that they still used manually hand-cranked film cameras at the time.

5. It sort of makes my head hurt thinking about how painstakingly accurate they must have been to make it work this well.

6. But also there’s some black face in this bit, I’m afraid.

7. But it’s not too egregiously monstrous, fortunately.

8. Weirdly though the entire section where he’s playing a monkey (orangutan) playing a human genuinely horrified me in ways beyond even the misidentification of the orangutan (an orangutan) as a monkey (not an orangutan).

9. Possibly the mild illness delirium I watched this through is to blame.

10. I do not know.

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Film Information

Title: The Playhouse
Directors: Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline
Year: 1921
Duration: 22 minutes
Watch: youtube

Categories
This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

The Scarecrow (1920)

In The Scarecrow, Buster Keaton gets to play around with Luke the Dog one last time. Which is nice.

After the relative disappointment of Convict 13, The Scarecrow is a pretty triumphant return to form. The plot as it is involves Buster and Joe Roberts wooing the farmer’s daughter, which culminates in a high speed wedding on the back of a motorbike, which is exciting enough, but the lead up to that is also probably the most consistently funny Buster Keaton film I’ve seen, with almost constant invention and boatloads of charm in just about every single scene.

There’s even some piglets. I like piglets.

So yeah this one’s great. Hooray.

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Notes

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

2. This was the first Buster Keaton film I ever saw.

3. And I loved it just as much now as I did then.

4. Two whole years ago.

5. What I noticed this time (that I had no scope of reference to notice last time), is how easily this one could have been another Fatty Arbuckle Buster Keaton double bill.

6. With Joe Roberts here in the Fatty Arbuckle role.

7. There’s the big man/small man dynamic, the chasing after a girl, Luke the Dog, everything.

8. Joe Roberts even does the coy, fluttering eyelids, thing when he sees Sybil Seely for the first time.

9. Although if this was still a Fatty Arbuckle production it’d have been him getting married at the end I suppose.

10. And also there’d probably have been at least one seen where he does something sort of stomach churningly crass, I suppose.

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Film Information

Title: The Scarecrow
Directors: Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline
Year: 1920
Duration: 20 minutes
Watch: youtube

Categories
This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

The Garage (1920)

In The Garage, Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton play car mechanics (who are also firemen). A fairly large proportion of the plot of this film involves everyone getting covered in engine oil.

This starts with Fatty Arbuckle re-doing the window cleaning joke from The Bell Boy (although his version isn’t anywhere near as good as Buster Keaton’s), but after that it’s all new stuff (well, mostly all new stuff). There’s some good scenes on a big turntable, Buster Keaton gets his trousers ripped off by Luke the Dog, and at the end everyone gets in a car and drives away into the sunset.

(Forever)
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Notes

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

2. The Garage was the very last film Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton made together.

3. So from now on it’s Buster Keaton only for me.

4. I’ll miss you, Fatty.

5. A bit.

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Film Information

Title: The Garage
Director: Fatty Arbuckle
Year: 1920
Duration: 21 minutes
Watch:

Categories
This Film Is 100 Years Old

The Hayseed (1919)

In The Hayseed, Fatty Arbuckle plays a postman who woos a local girl, who is also being pursued by the corrupt local Sheriff. To spoil the plot somewhat, Fatty prevails.

This was another fairly slight Fatty Arbuckle short, in that there’s not much here that’s especially inventive or funny. But what it does have is a kind of charming sweetness that you definitely don’t usually get with Fatty Arbuckle at all.

Also there’s plenty of Luke the Dog, and Buster Keaton does some magic tricks, which he’s, unsurprisingly brilliant, like he is at literally everything else he ever did.

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Notes

1. I watched this on blu-ray agai. Stills taken from here, which isn’t the best quality copy, I’m afraid.

2. It’s hard to see on that youtube version, but I also very much liked the sign on the side of the shop that says “There’s no end to our pretzels.”

3. Which is a pretty good joke.

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Film Information

Title: The Hayseed
Director: Fatty Arbuckle
Year: 1919
Duration: 21 minutes
Watch: youtube

Categories
This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

Back Stage (1919)

In Back Stage, Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton play the stage hands at a theatre. After spending the first half of the film meeting (and alienating) the various performers, they end up having to put on the show themselves, with fairly predictably disastrous results.

Most of these Fatty Arbuckle/Buster Keaton films seem to oscillate between either being wildly terrible or wildly brilliant, but this one sits somewhere in the middle, really. There’s lots of good sight gags, quite a bit of dancing, and a fairly long fight at the end, but it never hits the highs of their best stuff, unfortunately, while neverbeing egregiously terrible either.

It’s perfectly fine but you wouldn’t exactly miss it if you’d never seen it.

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Notes

1. I watched this on blu-ray again. The screenshots here are from this youtube version (which is also the same version that’s on the disc).

2. This features an early version (perhaps the first version) of the famous house wall falling down stunt, though, as also seen in One Week and (most famously) Steamboat Bill Jr.

3. Although as that’s from 1928 it’s beyond the scope of this website for a good few years still.

4. Keeping up the theme of my notes on the One Week review there, I am still seeing instances of this gag backwards through time.

5. I hope there is a 19th century version of it somewhere lurking around for me to find.

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Film Information

Title: Back Stage
Director: Fatty Arbuckle
Year: 1919
Duration: 21 minutes
Watch: youtube

Categories
This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

The Cook (1918)

After the absolute horror of Good Night, Nurse!, Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton return to form with this pretty wonderful film. Which is nice.

As you can probably guess from the title, Fatty Arbuckle is a chef in this, while Buster Keaton plays a waiter. The owner of the restaurant, meanwhile, is a man with an absolutely magnificent moustache. Which is nice.

This first section is really great, with Fatty Arbuckle serving up the food in increasingly absurd ways, while Buster’s all charm and acrobatics as the waiter (a pretty good combination, I’d say). There’s even an extended dance scene, which is pretty fun.

And there’s Luke the Dog. Lovely Luke the Dog.

The middle section is the only real lull here, with Fatty Arbuckle and the rest of the staff eating pasta for a full five minutes for some reason, intercut with occasional scenes of Luke the Dog chasing a bad guy around outside for a while.

But at least he gets a hug for all his hard work at the end.

After the interminable pasta interlude, it’s off to the seaside for a day out. I don’t know why. Maybe they just wanted to go back to Coney Island again (and who can blame them, really).

Anyway, at the beach, Fatty’s going fishing, Buster’s going to Goatland (which looks amazing), and Luke the Dog is still chasing that man around. And then there’s a pretty astonishing stunt at the end, which I have spoiled in the image below, I’m afraid.

It’s pretty good fun, all in all. I liked it.

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Notes

1. I watched this on blu-ray yet again. The screenshots are taken from this version on youtube (which seems to be the blu-ray restoration, but with different music).

2. This film was lost until about twenty years ago.

3. But then it was found.

4. I am glad it was.

5. Fatty Arbuckle’s dancing scene in this is also apparently a parody of the dancing seen in Salomé.

6. Another lost film

7. Which unfortunately seems to have stayed lost.

8. One of the few surviving clips from Buster Keaton’s 50s TV shows is him doing/re-doing Fatty’s dance here.

9. But I can’t seem to find it on the internet anywhere, I’m afraid.

10. And I’m not sure it was quite funny enough anyway really to warrant a remake.

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Film Information

Title: The Cook
Director: Fatty Arbuckle
Year: 1918
Duration: 20 minutes
Watch: youtube

Categories
This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

Good Night, Nurse! (1918)

In Good Night, Nurse!, Fatty Arbuckle is drunk. That’s about it.

The first five minutes of this involve a drunken Fatty Arbuckle trying to light a cigarette in the pouring rain. A woman kicks him in the face at one point.

This is as good as it gets.

The rest of the film involves Fatty Arbuckle being sectioned and operated on to cure him of his alcoholism. It’s an unfunny mess, really

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Notes:

1. I watched this on blu-ray again, and took the screenshots from here.

2. I found this genuinely distressing.

3. And didn’t like it at all.

4. Although a pillow fight resulting in a the sudden wave of feathers following Fatty down the hall like the blood gushing from the lift in The Shining looked quite nice.

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Film Information

Title: Good Night, Nurse!
Director: Fatty Arbuckle
Year: 1918
Duration: 20 minutes
Watch: youtube

Categories
This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

Moonshine (1918)

In Moonshine, Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton play some sort of government agents trying to capture illegal bootleggers making, well, moonshine out in the hills somewhere. It’s brilliant.

There’s a kind of manic energy to everything here, and a lot of inventiveness throughout. Condense this down to six minutes, animate it, and replace Fatty Arbuckle with a rabbit of some kind and you’d have something pretty good, I reckon.

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Notes

1. I watched this on blu-ray. The version I took the screenshots from seems to be an exact copy of that one.

2. With the same captions.

3. Of which there are a lot.

4. Including a lot of self-referentiality

5. Which is nice.

6. And builds well into the ending.

7. Which I loved.

8. And which reminded me of David Lynch again (Lost Highway, this time).

9. I hope I have accidentally discovered his secret source of inspiration now.

10. And the key to understanding everything.

11. Also, it’s kind of a shame that this one is the worst quality restoration so far (switching, sometimes frame by frame, between looking absolutely pristine and hauntingly ghostly), as a lot of the good visual gags sometimes get lost in the murk.

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Film Information

Title: Moonshine
Director: Fatty Arbuckle
Year: 1918
Duration: 18 minutes
Watch: Youtube

Categories
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