Monday, November 16, 2015

The High Sign (1921)

I’ve decided that it’d be nice to go back and do fuller reviews of some Buster Keaton projects that I previously covered as parts of a set, like Top Five posts or write-ups on his TV work.  At the very least, his independent shorts provide plenty of fodder for discussion.

A down-on-his-luck Buster cons his way into a job at a shooting gallery, where his fancy trick shooting (literally “trick” shooting – it’s all fake) earns him two brand-new, diametrically-opposed occupations.  He’s initiated into the notorious gang the Blinking Buzzards, where he’s tasked with assassinating a wealthy man:  the same man who’s just hired him as his bodyguard.  Since Buster is 1) not really the murdering type, and 2) smitten with the man’s daughter (because, duh,) he sets his protect his mark like no assassin has before.

The High Sign is the first short Buster made on his own, though it’s not the first he released; he didn’t think it was up-to-snuff as a first impression for himself as an independent filmmaker, so he held back its release until after he made One Week.  I’d say that was the right choice.  While this short is fun, it’s slightly messy, and not the instant classic that One Week is. 

In some ways, Buster is still finding his footing here.  The film leans more heavily on elements that don’t feature prominently in much of his work.  For instance, some of the intertitles feel a little self-consciously overwritten, like the alliteration-laden intro to the Blinking Buzzards.  Other jokes, though, are more in line with Buster’s sensibilities – “tight as a fourteen collar on a sixteen neck” is a terrific description of a miser.  The High Sign also uses lots of “cartoon gags,” literally impossible bits of business thrown in just for the joke.  People can be hit-or-miss on the more cartoonish stuff, but while they can seem a bit out-of-place, they still mostly work here.  Buster painting a hook on the wall and then hanging his hat on it is an iconic moment. 

There are also places where the gags don’t build as organically as they should.  It’s fine to take comedic detours, but they need to feel like they follow one another.  In this short, there’s an amusing enough little tangent of Buster helping customers at the shooting gallery that, while fun, would have been much better placed before he joins the Blinking Buzzards.  Once he’s been given his orders, the plot really should be heading in the general direction of August’s house – it feels like we lose momentum a bit.

This is all pretty nitpicky, but I do like the short.  It has a ton of great gags in it.  The newspaper gag is a classic, and several of Buster’s go-to devices all already on display and in fine form.  There are a few fantastic circular gags that come back around on themselves, the dog-powered(!) contraption Buster rigs up to trick people into thinking he’s a crack shot is pure Buster, and you just know he had a blast designing (and then running, jumping, and climbing through) all the trapdoors/revolving panels/secret exits at August’s house.  We get a nice early cop gag, featuring a fantastic off-the-cuff disguise – oh, Buster.  Plus, just for fun, there’s a brief cameo from Al St. John, part of the Fatty Arbuckle crowd.

Warnings

Slapstick violence and a bunch of light gunplay. 

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