Strictly
speaking, this is actually a (very) long commercial for Kodak (Buster did a lot
of advertisements, both film and print ads, during the Keaton renaissance,) but
it’s fun and IMDB lists it as a short film, so why not? Buster even knows how to shill in style.
The short
is split into two parts, before-and-after style. First, we meet the hapless but intrepid
Lester Snapwell (a.k.a. Buster) in the early days of photography. In a sequence made like a silent film, Lester
careens from one disaster to another in his attempt to photograph his sweetheart. Fast-forward to the present day, however
(well, the 1960s,) and taking pictures is a snap! The action is still silent, but the film
swaps out the intertitles for a purring voiceover narration that details how
easy and effective a Kodak camera is. Now,
Lester can take as many pictures, of as many lovely ladies, as he wants.
This
might sound weird to say, but I think this is the most successful of any of
Buster’s late-career works that try to mimic silent films. It’s still done with a bit of a wink to
old-timey sensibilities, but the comedy feels more genuine than in something
like, say, “The Silent Partner” (that Twilight Zone episode does a pretty good job and is the superior piece overall, but
from a strictly imitation standpoint, I think this short has a slight
edge.) I’m guessing Buster got a fair
amount of input on the gags, not necessarily because of the gags themselves,
but because of the way they build – they get set up nicely, knowing when to
come unexpectedly and when to get foreshadowed to create a bigger laugh.
And
there’s some nice ones here. Buster
playing around with the 19th-century camera is a hoot, and there’s a
fantastic mishap involving his girlfriend’s mother and a photographic plate. The modern-day segment has some amusing gags
too, along with the sight gag of little-fellow Buster being flanked by
statuesque models (who knew a Kodak camera was such a babe magnet?)
Point of
interest – the short also has a number of shots, as Buster handles the Kodak, that
show the finger Buster lost part of during a childhood run-in with a clothes
wringer. It’s not something you see more
than a glimpse of very often, as Buster tended to avoid close-ups of that hand
in his films and was good at holding it in such a way that the missing finger
segment wasn’t noticeable. Interesting
that Kodak didn’t balk at showing it during an ad.
Warning
A bit of
slapstick violence and brief suggestiveness.
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