The Final Buster Keaton
Shorts - 1922 - 1923
The Paleface (1922) – 5.0
This was Keaton's first short (21 minutes) in 1922 after producing six shorts
in 1921. These shorts are fairly complicated and took a bit of time to make.
The Paleface has a lot of running around and some good stunts from Keaton.
An evil oil company steals the land of an Indian tribe and orders them to
leave within 24 hours. The tribe with their large chief (Joe Roberts) decide
to kill the first white man that enters their territory. Of course, this
turns out to be Buster Keaton who is chasing butterflies. They try and roast
him but when that doesn't work they hail him and initiate him into the tribe.
Throw in multiple chases, slides down mountains, jumps into rivers and crossing
a wooden plank bridge one plank at a time. A bunch of laughs in there though
it is overall a bit rough and basic. In the end as the cards state he gets
"an Indian squab" (Virginia Fox). Not sure if that is a typo or not.
Cops (1922) –
8.0
This is 18 minutes of constant laughs. One of the better Keaton shorts. Nothing
really innovative but just clever and funny throughout. Full of mistaken
actions and misunderstood situations has the entire police force chasing
after Keaton. Of course, police chases were a mainstay of silent comedy but
Keaton adds enough flourishes to make it feel fresh. The film begins with
Keaton behind bars and his hoped for girlfriend (Virginia Fox) telling him
he has to make something of himself. Then the camera draws back and your
realize Keaton is not in jail but just behind an iron gate. In a sense telling
the audience that often the camera eye can not be trusted. And that theme
runs through the film as Keaton innocently ends up with a wallet flush with
money, uses it to buy a sidewalk full of furniture, buys a horse for $5,
has the furniture loaded for him and sets on his way and ends up in a police
parade, has a bomb thrown into his carriage, uses it to light a cigarette
and tosses it and the chase is underway. Of course, the furniture was bought
from a conman, the horse was not for sale but a suit behind it, the fellow
who loaded the furniture owned the furniture and thought Keaton was a mover.
All of it done very naturally and Keaton like a piece of modern art simply
flows expressionless along with it.
My Wife’s Relations
(1922) – 6.0
Misunderstandings once again land Buster into a difficult situation. Being
married. Through a confusion of language Buster finds himself married to
an unknown large bossy Polish woman with a family of brawny men that she
brings Buster, who looks even more diminutive than normal, home to. He is
treated with no respect until they falsely believe that Buster is going to
inherit $100,000 and all that changes. They rent him a lovely large house
to live in with his wife who has stopped hitting him and throw a big party.
But it all goes to hell when they discover they were wrong and a wild chase
within the house ensues and a blob of yeast begins to take over the house.
Not one of Buster's best till the house shenanigans begin and it goes into
total anarchy.
The Blacksmith
(1922) – 7.0
Less ambitious than some of Keaton's shorts but every bit as amusing. He
brings along two of his favorite actors - the very large Joe Roberts and
Virginia Fox who had been his love interest in his shorts seven times already.
When she married Darryl Zanuck in 1924 she basically retired from acting.
Zanuck was of course to become one of the great Hollywood moguls but at this
time he was cranking out a series of Rin Tin Tin films.
In this film Keaton is an apprentice blacksmith to Joe Roberts and when Roberts
gets thrown in jail because of circumstances too difficult to explain but
there is a giant magnet involved - Keaton takes over the business and demolishes
it all. There are a few lovely moments - selling a horse saddle to a lady
that is shock proof and working with a horse to buy it new horse shoes as
if he is a clerk in a shoe store. In a surreal moment he lifts a car with
a balloon which a kid blows out with a slingshot crashing the car through
the floor. More destruction lies ahead until he is being chased down the
street and catches a female rider thrown from her horse and they live happily
ever after.
The Frozen North
(1922) – 5.0
This is one of the odder Keaton films as he plays against his typical character
of a average man swept away by events or fate and never changing expression
no matter what as if this is all normal or predestined. He is a villain in
this one and you are kind of in shock - apparently it was a parody of William
S. Hart films who was a big star in melodramatic Westerns. Not knowing William
Hart from Gary Hart I can't say I quite got that. There are some funny bits
here but I kept thinking - what is going on? Keaton just killed two people
in cold blood when he mistook them for his wife and another man and upon
realizing that he tips his hat to them and skedaddles. His wife is fine until
a pot falls on her head and she is knocked out and when the Mountie knocks
on the door Buster picks her up and dances with her and then drops her once
the policeman is gone. He then chases after a married woman. What the hell.
This all takes place in freezing cold snow shot in north California. I just
could never quite get into this one.
The Electric House
(1922) – 6.0
Keaton had a love for gadgets - in his real life and in the movies. He uses
comical gadgets and mechanical cleverness in many of his short films. And
he brings it all to this film that is full of them. Buster graduates and
is mistaken for an electrical engineer by regular Joe Roberts. Roberts wants
him to electrify his house whatever that means. He goes on vacation with
his wife and daughter (Virginia Fox) and gives Keaton carte blanch to do
whatever he wants.
Keaton does some very cool stuff - the stairs to the second floor become
an escalator of sorts, the pool table sets the balls automatically, the food
from the kitchen comes in on trains, the bathtub comes to you and many more.
Of course it all goes wrong eventually and trouble ensues - though to my
mind it never reaches the level of hilarity that the premise promises but
settles for good natured fun. Keaton had originally tried filming this two
years previously but broke his leg on the moving stairs and in the pool game
we get a slight glimpse of Keaton playing pool which he was said to be very
good at.
Day Dreams (1922)
– 7.0
Only two more Buster Keaton shorts after this one before he moved into feature
films. This one is very basic with a lot of slapstick and one very lengthy
chase by the police that he did in a few of his shorts but pretty much everything
works here. Very funny.
Buster is in love but hasn't made much of himself so he promises the father
of his intended victim that he will go to the big city and succeed or come
back and shoot himself. The father says he will lend him his gun. So off
Buster goes to make a hash of everything. The short is missing a fair amount
of footage but for some reason he has the entire police force chasing after
him on foot and it is a doozy. The best scene is of Buster on a ships giant
wheel like you see on the old steamboats trying to keep pace with the turning
of the wheel. Eventually he admits defeat, mails himself back to his beloved
- where the father gives Buster a gun and he and his daughter go into another
room and patiently wait for Buster to shoot himself!
Balloonatic (1923)
– 4/10
This is Keaton's second to last short before he was to move on to features
which makes it surprising at how lackluster it is. Perhaps his worst of the
shorts. It has no narrative cohesion and feels like he had a bunch of leftover
gags that he wanted to get off his plate. It begins with him in an amusement
park where he goes into the tunnel of love with a woman he sat next to and
he comes out with a black eye. Next he is on top of a balloon putting on
a pennant when it takes off with him on it and no one else. He shoots at
a duck, hits the balloon and brings it down in the wilderness where he comes
across the woman who slapped him in the tunnel of love out camping. Neither
have a clue what they are doing. None of it is particularly funny. It ends
though on a lovely pure Keatonesque note - he and the woman are on a makeshift
boat floating down the river finally in love when the boat comes to a steep
and high waterfall - but the boat just keeps floating above as if love is
carrying them - when in fact it turns out to be the balloon.
The Love Nest
(1923) - 6.0
This was Buster Keaton's final short film before he began producing feature
films. Over the next six years he was to make ten films for his own production
company under the financial arm of Joseph Schenck and after Schenck persuaded
Buster to sign up with MGM in 1928 he made one more great film, The Cameraman.
After that though MGM claimed creative control and it was all downhill. A
very sad period in Keaton's life and a black hole for film fans. They squeezed
the life out of his films.
This one has its moments - somewhat ambitious for Buster - but none of his
great stunts or moments of pure joy. His fiancée has broken off with
him and so he decides to take a small motor boat and travel around the world.
He doesn't get far before he is Shanghaied into service for a whaling boat
under Keaton regular Joe Roberts. He is a tough captain - when his men make
a mistake he throws them overboard. There isn't much doubt that Buster will
be making plenty of those.