{"id":1279,"date":"2026-02-06T17:26:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T17:26:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/?p=1279"},"modified":"2026-02-06T17:29:27","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T17:29:27","slug":"seven-chances-1925","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/2026\/02\/06\/seven-chances-1925\/","title":{"rendered":"Seven Chances (1925)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seven Chances <\/em>is a silent comedy from 1925, directed by and starring Buster Keaton<\/em>, and based on a 1916 play by Roi Cooper Megrue<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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). <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

___________<\/p>\n

Notes<\/strong><\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> I watched this on Mubi<\/a>, although how long it’ll be on there I don’t know.<\/em><\/p>\n

2.<\/strong> 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<\/a> instead.<\/em><\/p>\n

3.<\/strong> The first two-thirds or so of this is unfortunately marred by constant racist interruptions.<\/em><\/p>\n

4.<\/strong> Which kind of under cut the charm of the whole thing to be honest.<\/em><\/p>\n

5.<\/strong> The final 20 minute action sequence really is astonishingly spectacular though.<\/em><\/p>\n

6.<\/strong> And almost entirely racism free.<\/em><\/p>\n

7.<\/strong> Which is a bit of a relief<\/em><\/p>\n

8.<\/strong> 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)<\/em><\/p>\n

9.<\/strong> There’s a real dreaminess to mid 20s technicolor films that I love.<\/em><\/p>\n

10.<\/strong> As seen in The Black Pirate<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

11.<\/strong> An actual 100 year old film which I’ll review next week sometime hopefully<\/em><\/p>\n

12.<\/strong> Doing this website’s only job on time for once<\/em><\/p>\n

13.<\/strong> (1926 seems to be a good year for films, because I’ll get to watch The General<\/a> and The Adventures Of Prince Achmed<\/a> too)<\/em><\/p>\n

___________<\/p>\n

Film Information<\/p>\n

Title:<\/strong> Seven Chances<\/em>
\nDirector:<\/strong> Buster Keaton<\/em>
\nYear:<\/strong> 1925<\/em>
\nDuration:<\/strong> 1 hour<\/em>
\nWatch:<\/strong> youtube<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[562,108,473,505,11,569,568,471,388,570],"class_list":["post-1279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-film-is-more-than-100-years-old","tag-562","tag-buster-keaton","tag-colour","tag-douglas-fairbanks","tag-lotte-reiniger","tag-roi-cooper-megrue","tag-seven-chances","tag-technicolor","tag-the-adventures-of-prince-achmed","tag-the-black-pirate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1279"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1287,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1279\/revisions\/1287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accumulationofthings.com\/100\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}