Here’s
my final write-up on Buster Keaton’s golden-era silent shorts. I wouldn’t say any of these films are bad, nowhere near it –
nothing like the nadir of some of the MGM stuff – but they’re more aimless than
the shorts I’ve previously reviewed, and made with less of Buster’s particular
flair.
Hard
Luck (1921)
An
amusing premise – Buster is a heartbroken boy so hapless, he can’t even commit
suicide properly – that doesn’t play out to its full potential. All the gags that follow this central idea
are wonderfully, darkly comic (his failed attempt to hang himself and his
efforts to get hit by a car are my favorites,) but the short makes numerous
side trips and abandons its main theme for a long stretch. None of the tangents are done as well as the
grim humor at its heart.
My Wife’s
Relations (1922)
My
least favorite of Buster’s independent shorts, in which Buster accidentally
marries an unpleasant woman and moves in with her even more unpleasant
family. There are rumblings that it was
inspired by Buster’s first set of in-laws, who descended on him after he
married Natalie Talmadge. I don’t know
about that, but the short feels very rote, lots of by-the-numbers slapstick and
not much of the usual Buster inventiveness.
Its roughness reminds me of some of the less creative Fatty Arbuckle
shorts. Its best laugh, no surprise, is
its most Buster-esque, when he finally gets some meat at dinner by tricking his
Catholic in-laws into thinking it’s Friday.
Daydreams (1922)
This is
a funny short, but it’s pretty meandering.
Rather than one story, it’s a series of several vignettes. Before he can marry his girl, Buster goes to
the city to make his fortune. His
misleading letters home juxtapose his girlfriend’s fantasies about his
profession with his actual position. ie,
when he describes himself as “cleaning up Wall Street,” she imagines him as a
stockbroker, but in actuality, he’s of course a street sweeper. The vet’s office routine is great throughout,
and Buster obviously came up with more terrific chased-by-police gags after
making Cops, but as a whole, it feels
like fours skits instead of a short film.
The
Balloonatic (1923)
Buster
inadvertently flies off in a hot-air balloon (all in a day’s work, right?) and
gets himself stranded in the wilderness.
There are some nice “roughing it” gags, but plenty of earlier shorts
have similar bits to better effect, and he did funnier routines on the same
theme in later stuff as well, notably Battling
Butler. I do, however, adore the final sight gag – completely, utterly,
magically Buster, no question.
No comments:
Post a Comment