Le roi des Champs-Élysées (1934)

I’m glad I finally tracked down this post-MGM Buster Keaton talkie.  I’d talked to people who held it up as a “what might have been” for Buster’s sound career, a better example of his potential in talkies than his MGM films, but calling it “out of print” puts it lightly.  After a lot of scrounging, though, I at last had an opportunity to see it, and what’s more, to understand it!

See, Le roi des Champs-Élysées is filmed in French, and I’ve met Keatonians who’ve seen it with Spanish subtitles or none at all.  So, to find it subtitled in English was a real boon!  (Note:  although Buster reshot his MGM films in French, Spanish, and German for foreign distribution, his French apparently wasn’t up to snuff for an actual French movie.  All his lines are dubbed, which you might say doesn’t count as a talking performance, but it’s a performance in a story told with dialogue, which is almost as significant as line delivery.  Also, he was clearly performing in French, since his lip movements match the dubbing, and occasionally the odd word or adlib is undubbed.  It’s funny – I thought his speaking voice seemed incongruous when I first heard it, but now, it’s bizarre to hearing someone else’s voice coming out of his mouth.)

This film is known for Buster playing two roles.  While the story meanders a lot, the biggest driving plot point is a case of mistaken identity between Buster Garnier, a would-be actor, and Jim le Balafré, a notorious gangster.  When Buster loses his job in a spectacularly Busterish way, his mother (a prompter at a theatre) gets him two lines as an escaped convict in a play.  Unfortunately, opening night corresponds with Jim’s decidedly less fictional escape from a real prison, and in the commotion of the breakout, his gang picks up Buster instead.  In order to keep the gangsters from suspecting the mistake and bumping them off, our poor hero’s acting is really put to the test, and all the while, he’s desperate to get back to the theatre in time for his entrance.

Buster does a fine job playing both roles, especially Jim, which is so different from his usual persona.  Sure, a lot of Buster’s characters have a confidence that belie their size and position, but the only times he plays someone half as commanding as Jim have been in dream sequences – Sherlock Jr. and The Frozen North.  Jim is a genuine tough customer, and he brings an impressive menace to the character.  Whether he’s playing Buster, Jim, or Buster pretending to be Jim, it’s always clear who we’re seeing at any given moment.  Not bad at all.

Beyond that, I can really see this as the type of talkie Buster might have made if he’d still had his own independent studio – his would’ve been cooler, naturally, but it’s so much more him than a lot of the MGM stuff.  The gags build excellently, and there are plenty of comic set pieces built around the physical humor.  Dialogue is used when it’s needed to convey plot, add to the story, and drop in a bit of wordplay, but the film also knows when to back off on the talking.  That, I think, is a very Buster thing to do – use dialogue to enhance the film, not as a one-trick pony.

The film is also known for its final shot, in which the Great Stone Face looks a little less somber than usual.  I don’t know if it quite works in a narrative sense, but as a Buster fan, it’s fun to see.

Warnings

Plenty of slapstick violence, some gang violence, drinking, and smoking.