Top Five Gags: The Boat

 *Spoilers.*

November 10^th, 1921—the day The Boat was released. One of Buster Keaton’s finest, this is just a damn good short. It’s very representative of everything Buster was as a comedian and a filmmaker, a simple story packed with mechanical gags, inventive stunts, and a slyness to the humor.

 

Leaving Home

When Buster builds a boat in his garage, of course he makes it too big to fit through the door. He removes the frame and some of the brickwork to create a bigger opening, but he misjudges, and the whole house comes down as he pulls the boat out. With the lifeboat reduced to splinters in the collapse, I love that he picks the bathtub out of the wreckage to use as a substitute. It’s a whimsical touch that pays off big later.

 

Man Overboard

Buster accidentally tips one of his sons overboard, and naturally, the life preserver sinks like a stone so he has to jump in after the boy. What really makes this gag are all the fun Bustery flourishes peppered in: checking the temperature of the water before diving in, Buster’s son stepping on his face as he (the boy) climbs back into the boat, and that wonderfully gravity-defying sight of Buster trying to pull himself back up by the seat of his pants. It’s just, *chef’s kiss!*

 

Barrel Rolling

I mentioned this scene back in my Top Five Stunts posts for Buster’s independent shorts, but it deserves a place here too. Because in addition to being a wildly-impressive feat of acrobatics and filmmaking to pull off, it’s just so damn funny to watch Buster tumbling and clambering along as the boat continuously rolls over and over in the storm-tossed waters. The crowning moment is when he decides to nail his shoes to the floor so he can stay next to the telegraph, operating it fully upside-down the next time the boat barrel rolls.

 

 

Springing a Leak

The patch Buster attempted on an earlier, self-inflicted leak has failed, and in all his wisdom, he decides that the solution is to augur a hole in the floor of the cabin and stick a funnel in it, so the water from the leak can neatly empty back into the ocean through the funnel. This is every bit as “successful” as you’d expect, and the resulting sequence of Buster desperately trying to stop the leaks as he gets battered by the rush of water is hilarious. It culminates in him delightfully trying to empty the water out through a porthole one teapcupful at a time (except, of course, the storm is blowing water in through the porthole too!)

 

Damfino

What I imagine might be the most famous pun in silent film history. It’s used first in the S.O.S. scene, which is also awesome, but I forced myself to pick just one Damfino gag and this is the classic. Damfino is the name of Buster’s boat, and the S.O.S. scene establishes the pun with the telegraph exchange, “Who is it?”, “Damfino,” “Neither do I.” And so, we don’t need an intertitle to explicitly state it for us at the end of the short, when the bedraggled family washes ashore. “Where are we?” Buster’s wife asks, and you can read the answer on his lips, loud and clear. Ending a silent short film on a pun—the balls on that man!