The Triumph of Lester Snapwell (1963)

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 19^th-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.