Last Four Independent Shorts: Buster Keaton

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.