This is
the first Buster Keaton film I ever saw – my interest had been piqued after
watching Benny & Joon, and I had
the good fortune to find out it was due to air on TCM shortly. One recording later (they showed it in the
middle of the night, so I didn’t see it until the next day,) I got my first glimpse
of Buster’s work in this, one of his most beloved features. These 70 minutes of riotous laughter were enough to convince me that I needed to see
more, and before long, I was picking up Kino’s complete collection of his
independent shorts and features on DVD, not far from sight unseen.
The
plot is a bit of a comedic Romeo and
Juliet on steamboats, with extra daddy issues for zest. Willie Canfield, a young, ukulele-playing
aesthete, has just returned from school to visit his salt-of-the-earth river
rat father, Steamboat Bill. Not having
seen Willie since he was a tyke, Bill is embarrassed of his delicate son, with
his loudly-patterned clothes and affected manners. He takes it upon himself to whip Willie into
a man he can be proud of, while at the same time trying to keep him away from
his girl Kitty. Willie knows Kitty from
school, and naturally, it turns out that her dad is the big steamboat tycoon
trying to run Bill out of business. In
typical Buster fashion, though, Willie is a where-there’s-a-will young man, and
literally come hell or high water, he’s not about to be separated from Kitty.
One of
this film’s best qualities is the relationship between Bill and Willie. Although the two have a lot of trouble
connecting, and the approval Willie craves isn’t readily forthcoming, you can
tell that Bill really does love Willie.
When others hassle or insult him, Bill is quick to defend him, and his
vain efforts to teach Willie how to throw a punch or drive the boat are his
awkward way of reaching out. In
unguarded moments when no one is watching (including Willie himself,) Bill’s
fondness for his son comes through.
Not to
mention, this movie is just tremendously funny.
The entire storm sequence is a comic tour-de-force, capped by the most
iconic stunt of Buster’s career: the
scene where he narrowly escapes being crushed by a falling house-front, passing
safely through the open window. It’s so
perfectly executed, so ballsy, so Buster.
And it’s not just the big moments.
There are great gags throughout, and Buster’s acting in the jail scene
is some of his funniest ever (I can’t get enough of his not-so-subtle attempts
to indicate that there’s a file and other tools inside the bread.)
All
throughout my rewatch of Buster’s classic works, I’ve been struck by his
athletic prowess. It stands out most in
films like one, where he plays a character who’s ostensibly weak and
clumsy. It takes incredible strength and coordination to fall and tumble the way he
does (it’s especially amusing when he’s wearing a costume without sleeves, like
his track uniform in College, so you
can see the size of the “weakling’s” muscles.)
In this movie, one scene that stands out involves him stumbling over the
edge of an upper deck in the dark. He
clings to the edge while groping and squirming around wildly with his legs
before eventually finding a way to scramble down like an honest-to-goodness
monkey. The man was a marvel.
Warnings
Just a
lot of slapstick violence.
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