Top Five Gags: Seven Chances

I must’ve been sleeping on the job, because I missed the 100-year anniversary of the release of Seven Chances. It came out on March 15, 1925, but I’ll play a little catchup and write about it now. Seven Chances doesn’t have nearly as many phenomenal comic sequences as some of Buster’s films do.  However, the one major comedic set piece, the bridal chase, is quite the doozy, and three of my top five gags are from that epic chase scene.

 

An Important Sit-Down

Seven Chances feels rather generic at times as a film, but this little throwaway bit of business is so Buster.  Once the lawyer finally gets Jimmie’s attention, Jimmie and his partner sit the lawyer down to talk.  In tandem, they bring chairs to set on either side of him and then both sit on the edge of the desk, resting their feet on the chair rungs.  Ha!

 

Proposal on the Go

While some of the proposals are pretty fun, this one is easily the best.  Getting desperate, Jimmie asks a passing motorist to marry him and waits so distractedly for his answer that he drives his car half-up a tree.  Great timing, even better visual.

 

What’s the Time?

Frantic to get to Mary’s house before 7 (and before the brides tear him limb from limb,) Jimmie is trying to figure what time it is, and the universe is plotting against him.  A few terrific gags here, especially when Jimmie stops at a store window filled with clocks and is dismayed to see that each one displays a different time: it’s a repair shop.

 

Throwing Bricks

Here’s a fun sight gag in the middle of the chase.  A bricklayer is putting up a wall, and as the brides pass by, one of them stops to grab one of the still-wet bricks to throw at Jimmie.  A few more avail themselves of the wall, and then the entire crowd, and when the brides swarm away, the whole wall has disappeared.

 

Rolling Boulders

Of course this one was on here—it’s the crowning jewel of Seven Chances.  The brides have been chasing Jimmie over hill and dale, and he’s tearing down a steep hill when he accidentally dislodges a few small rocks with his feet.  They in turn dislodge bigger rocks, which dislodge bigger rocks, and soon, Jimmie has a fleet of stones on his tail, ranging in size from pebbles to boulders, as he races to the bottom of the hill.  This gag started as a mistake.  In the initial cut of the film, Buster didn’t notice that he accidentally nudged a few rocks loose in his run down the hill, not until a test audience noticed it and thought it was hilarious.  Always someone willing to improve his work, and never one to do things by half measures, Buster had hundreds of fake rocks made and arranged on the hill in order to shoot the sequence as it is now.