The Navigator (1924)

 

I’ve been on a major Buster Keaton kick lately, ‘cause he’s awesome.  Expect a spate of Buster-related posts in the days to come.  I’ll do my best to space them out, but no promises.

 

Of the Buster features I’ve recently watched, I think The Navigator is my favorite.  It’s fantastically funny, Buster’s comedic sensibilities are in full force, and he’s paired with a leading lady who’s game and spirited.  For a movie that was basically born out of Buster’s love of machines and gadgets (step one:  buy a large passenger ship, step two:  think of all the nautical gags you can, step three:  make a movie,) it’s incredibly enjoyable.

 

Rollo Treadway is one of Buster’s dandy characters, a wealthy young man who takes a chauffeur to go across the street.  For reasons of absurdity, he and Betsy, the equally pampered girl who’s just turned down his marriage proposal, wind up together as the sole passengers on an unmanned ship.  Together, they face storms, enemies, and other dangers, all without the basic knowledge required to boil an egg.  Will love be rekindled as the pair muddles through life at sea?  It’s a silent comedy – what do you think?

 

Rollo and Betsy’s floundering efforts to fend for themselves are worth the price of admission.  Their first attempt at breakfast is a riot, from Betsy delicately plunking three beans into the coffee pot to Rollo taking a meat cleaver to an impenetrable tin of sardines.  With so much trouble in the kitchen, just imagine the difficulties they have with the finer points of navigating and maintaining a ship.  However, it wouldn’t feel like a Buster Keaton film without some creative and industrious problem-solving, and watching them learn how to survive is a blast.

 

The gags are of course the highlight of the film, most of whic feel organic to the admittedly-thin story.  The premise leaves room for a lot of nice comedic set-pieces, like fussing with the lifeboat and inevitably needing to don a diving suit for performing underwater repairs.  The comedy comes fast and furious without giving the movie the meandering gag-to-gag quality that you sometimes see in these kinds of films. 

 

Naturally, Buster himself is terrific.  I love his dandies, and Rollo is a terrific example.  He’s clueless and prissy (his initial response to having his hats blown off by the wind is to simply put on new hats,) but he’s no quitter, and his fumbling tenacity is endearing.  There are some great chances to show off his physical comedy, and you don’t realize how badly you need to see Buster Keaton dueling a swordfish until you’ve seen it.  Kathryn McGuire’s Betsy is probably one of the best women in any of his movies.  Though Betsy obviously isn’t super-capable, neither is Rollo, and her ineptness is almost as funny as his.  She’s similarly irrepressible and is forever an active presence (if not always a helpful one) in the story.  Plus, the woman is up for anything; I won’t say she’s a match for Buster’s athleticism, but she gets flung, dragged, and carried all over that ship, and she keeps popping right back up again.

 

Warnings

 

Some mild violence and 1920s racial insensitivity.