Cops (1922)

Gotta love Cops – it’s been one of my favorite Buster shorts for quite a while.  With sharp humor, inventive storytelling, and fantastic stunts, it’s a must-see for any budding Buster Keaton fan.

Charged by the girl he loves to become a “big business man,” Buster’s attempts to come up in the world aren’t exactly what he’d hope for.  Despite stumbling into some early luck, he then proceeds to get hoodwinked, finds himself saddled with a monumentally uncooperative equine partner, and, thanks to some horrendous wrong-place-wrong-time syndrome, winds up the subject of a truly epic police manhunt.  Just another Tuesday, right?

Any discussion of Cops obviously has to start with the colossal chase sequence, featuring a veritable horde of the Keystone boys in blue.  Watching the short this time around, I was struck by a few things.  First, the chase is quite a bit shorter than I tend to think, covering only a third of the 18-minute short.  And second, having recently reviewed a number of Buster’s other independent shorts, I think the cop chases in The Goat, Neighbors, and Daydreams actually have a higher proportion of really creative evasions on Buster’s part.  I think, due to the sheer volume of officers here, Buster is able to get away with just using the sight gag of his little fellow being chased by legions of cops, so it’s a bit short on the really original, Bustery escape stuff.

Which isn’t to sell the chase scene short.  Buster still gets in some excellent licks.  He nicely subverts the “hide behind a traffic cop” technique he’s used before, and the ladder gag is a comic masterpiece.  His final triumph might come off as a little too simple, but I just love it; it’s very sly and endlessly Buster.  (Also, not for nothing, out of all the times Buster has had to flee from officers of the law, this short gives them the most credible reason to be after him.  Not that it’s actually Buster’s fault, but an unfortunate mishap makes everyone very understandably think him an immensely shady character who needs to be stopped.)

The preceding two-thirds of the short are nothing to sneeze at, either.  The gags and story flow into each other really well, informing one another, building the humor, and moving the plot along.  Everything involving Buster and the horse cart is amazing, my personal favorite moments being the mechanical turn-signal and Buster’s restless pacing on the moving cart.  Everything just comes together splendidly, making for a really satisfying viewer experience.

This short also features – you guessed it! – Virginia Fox and Big Joe Roberts.  Both have almost ridiculously-small parts, but it’s nice to see them all the same.  Fox is Buster’s rather imperious girl, while Roberts plays the police chief.

Warnings

Slapstick violence and an act of anarchy.