37. Sherlock, Jr. (1924)
In this first one — the most unconventional of the six — Buster plays a projectionist who wants to be a detective and tries to solve the case of a missing watch. But he's not very good at it and after a few comic misadventures his girlfriend finds the culprit without much trouble at all. The plot is more or less wrapped up in twenty minutes, but what follows is a dream sequence that takes up most of the rest of the film and features an awesome array of set-pieces as Buster jumps into a movie screen where he takes on the role of the super detective. Two scenes stand out, but it's all golden. First Buster jumps head-first through a window where he had carefully positioned a box, emerges from the other side wearing a dress that was in the box, and immediately imitates an old woman to evade his pursuers. You can't help but rewind it and watch it again and wonder how on earth it was filmed. The other notable scene is where Buster rides on the handlebars of a motorcycle (the other rider having fallen off) and negotiates various obstacles, collapsing bridges and oncoming trains. It's seriously dangerous stuff which you could never get away with filming nowadays but you have to just sit there and marvel at it.
220. The Navigator (1924)
The weakest of the six, The Navigator is more a series of sketches than a fully coherent narrative. There's some tenuous story about a young couple who get stranded on a passenger ship which is cast adrift on the ocean but it doesn't make much sense. The set-pieces range from the very good to the corny. In one Buster has trouble putting together a deck-chair — hilarious stuff! The underwater sequences are well done and the finale is quite impressive as the duo fight off a bunch of savage cannibals. It's not very politically correct, but it's very inventive and exciting. A good enjoyable film, but I have no idea why the person who voted it onto the list ranked it above the other five here.
112. Seven Chances (1925)
(watch this one on Youtube)The most modern of the six — the plot wouldn't look out of place in a 90's rom-com — this one has Buster needing to get married in a day in order to inherit a huge sum. He messes it up with his sweetheart but, undeterred, he goes on a quest to propose to anyone he can find. First he asks the seven single women at his club, with predictable results, then he walks down the street chatting up everybody he meets. He even approaches, unknowingly, a black woman, a Jew and a drag queen. Brilliant stuff — as if a white man could ever marry one of those people. Comedy gold.
Such dubious moments aside, though, this film is laden with gags, no more so than in the final segment where he's pursued by an army of brides-to-be as he races to marry his sweetheart (who's forgiven him) by the deadline. The stunts and acrobatics are astounding and genuinely more impressive than anything you find in today's cinema. Jackie Chan is said to have been inspired by Keaton but he never reached these heights.
If you watch this on Youtube (linked above), watch out for the colour scenes right at the start — not bad for 1925.
32. The General (1927)
This is Keaton's Pet Sounds. The work which had gone before was undoubtedly very good, but he really stepped up with The General which is a more grown-up and polished film. Set in the American Civil War, Buster plays a man who is shunned by his friends for not being allowed to enlist in the Confederate army but gets caught up in events when some Unionists steal his beloved steam train (the eponymous General) and he heads off in pursuit. There's so much to love here, but the highlights have to be the two train chases which are so inventive and exciting. You wouldn't think that you could get much creative mileage from a chase sequence where the vehicles are confined to a linear track, but under Keaton's direction you get everything.
The General is quite critical of war and patriotism, a fairly brave statement at the time and probably why the film tanked at the box office. Most of the soldiers in the film are arrogant and pompous and generally a bit incompetent. Buster isn't much better. He runs rings around his enemies, but not usually from any great wit or superior soldiery — most of the time he succeeds by pure blind luck. The motives for war are noticeably absent, too. Buster doesn't seem interested in any of the reasons for fighting for the South — he just wants to look good wearing the uniform for his girl. Nor does he chase after the bad guys because he wants to stop the enemy from carrying out their dastardly plan, or even because he wants to save his lady from their evil clutches — he just wants to get his train back. He's still the hero, of course, and saves the day like every hero should. But he's a fairly pitiable hero, perhaps a point Keaton was trying to make about soldiers in general.
Incidentally, the version embedded above has a really weird soundtrack — it kicks off with Elgar for no particularly good reason and the first few minutes are quite hard to watch. I think it gets better later on, though. I have it on DVD where the soundtrack is a much more appropriate Scott Joplin. It's quite interesting how important sound is for a silent film! Also, ignore the title cards right at the start — they aren't on the DVD version and are both irrelevant and spoil the plot a little.
46. Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)
This one is a strange affair. Maybe it's because I saw this film last of the six, but it didn't impress me. It's 70 minutes long and the first 55 of them are pretty dire, to be frank. We're talking sub-Chuckle Brothers physical comedy as Buster falls off things, walks into things and tries on silly hats. I was struggling to keep watching, but I did know what was to come as this is the film with his most famous scene.
There really isn't much of a story. Buster is the public-school educated son of a salty old riverboat captain. His sweetheart is the daughter of a rival riverboat owner, but Romeo and Juliet this isn't. The dad gets arrested and Buster makes a bizarre attempt to free him from prison, though I'm not sure what would have happened if he'd succeeded. But then a cyclone hits and the film changes completely. The last 15 minutes are truly magnificent as the town is destroyed by the winds. We see houses lift up off their foundations, trees being uprooted and blown across town, buildings topple over and in amongst the wreckage flies Buster. Some of the scenes are quite remarkable and have rightly gone down in cinema history. The rumour was that he was suicidal and so took ridiculous risks for the sake of making these sensational stunts but whatever the truth, the end product is amazing.
It's still worth sitting through the movie to get to the end, but you're probably better off just fast-forwarding it to its conclusion.
112. The Cameraman (1928)
This was Keaton's first movie for MGM and the last of his great films. MGM would afterwards remove creative control and therefore all that was good about his films. Morons. Buster plays a cameraman who wants to shoot footage for the news and win the heart of a girl who works at the news office. There's nothing particularly new or revolutionary about this film compared to the other five — it's just a very well executed comedy. Again, it's the finale that impresses with two brilliant scenes. First, a shootout between rival Chinese gangs and then a boating accident and daring rescue. The rest of the film is pretty good, too, although the visit to the swimming pool feels a bit out of place in the middle.
Buster also gets himself a monkey sidekick, which can never be a bad thing. I think most films could be improved if the hero had a monkey sidekick.
I was already a Buster Keaton fan on the basis of one film, but now I've seen all these six my love for the little stony-faced acrobat is confirmed. Nevertheless, I am a little surprised at how well some of these films rank. The General, of course, is rightly near the top of the pile. An almost perfect film, Orson Welles said it was the greatest comedy ever, the greatest war film ever and probably the greatest film ever too. Sherlock, Jr. is imaginative and fantastical and tremendous fun. The rest also have moments of brilliance — some more than others — but are still fairly patchy. I'll concede that Steamboat Bill, Jr. should be included on the basis of its final act alone, but I'm not convinced about the rest. But who cares — they're all terrific entertainment even after all these years and it would take a very cold-hearted person to sit through them without a big grin on their face.
P.S. It seems the embedded videos are too wide to fit in this column, and I don't really want to widen the column. If you do want to watch them, you'll have to full-screen it (the button that's cut off furthest on the right) or go to archive.org and see them there.
No comments:
Post a Comment