Top Five Gags: Go West

*Spoilers*

November 1, 1925—the day Go West was released. Strictly speaking, probably a mid-range Buster Keaton feature (I mean, anything rankable has a mid-range by definition, right?), but it’s tons of fun. Brown Eyes is a topnotch leading lady, and there are some terrific bits here. These are my favorites!

 

Train Barrels

“Buster vs. object(s) vs. gravity” is a time-honored gag format, and this one is great! While riding the rails, Friendless gets on the wrong side of some stacks of barrels. I love how he flails like he’s drowning in a ball pit, we get some perfectly-timed wrestling with one barrel then another, and the coup de grâce comes at the end of the sequence: just after Friendless climbs inside one of the barrels for safekeeping, that’s when the door to the train car slides open and the barrels begin rolling out.

 

Milking the Cow

Probably my biggest laughs of the whole movie come from this scene, which is so simple but so hilarious. Tasked with milking a cow, Friendless sets the milk bucket beneath the cow, takes a seat in front of her…and waits. His alternating patience and confusion cracks me up every damn time. I adore the way he picks up the bucket and shows it to her, just in case she missed it, and it kills me that he gets up and sets the stool behind her in case she wants to sit down. Buster could do such amazing things with his stunts and his machines, but he could also mine absolute gold out of doing so little.

 

Branding Brown Eyes

Classic Buster Keaton problem-solving! By this point, Friendless has bonded with Brown Eyes the cow, and he’s troubled by the rough, violent sight of the cattle being branded. So when he’s told to do the same to her, he takes her aside and carefully shaves the branding symbol onto her flank. The whole scene is a delight, but the little touches make it sing even more, like when he uses some of her milk to mix up the shaving cream.

 

Los Angeles Cattle Rustling

It might be unfair to look at something so all encompassing, since Friendless trying to herd the cattle from downtown LA to the stockyards is the entire third act of the film. But I’d have a hard time picking out one or more individual bits from the sequence, so we’re putting it all together. Anything involving Friendless trying to rustle cattle out of a store is super fun, and I love the gag of all the people fleeing out of the Turkish bathhouse.

 

Red Devil Toreador

And of course, we have the clincher! Having already learned that waving red material attracts the cattle, Friendless rents a red devil costume, intending to lead the cattle calmly to the stockyards but accidentally kicking off a stampede. I just love it any time someone is following/tailing/chasing Buster and he moves from a loping walk to a fast walk to a nervous trot to a full-pelt run—he always does it magnificently, and it’s so silly that the someones chasing him this time are a herd of cattle!

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.

Relationship Spotlight: Rollo Treadway & Betsy O’Brien (The Navigator)

October 13, 1924—the day The Navigator was released. Other than the cheap “cannibal” tropes, I love this movie, so much so that I’ve already done a Top Five Gags post, along with Favorite Characters posts for both Rollo and Betsy. So what’s left? Rollo and Betsy together, of course!

Pound for pound, Kathryn McGuire was my favorite leading lady in Buster’s features. She’s great in Sherlock Jr. (if we’re counting that as a feature,) and she’s fabulous here. In both cases, she really gets to do something. Whether it’s action, agency, or humor, she’s more than just a pretty girl for Buster to swoon over, rescue, or do fun gags around. I think that’s the key element that makes Rollo and Betsy’s relationship so much fun.

Rollo is far from the only clueless dandy Buster has played, though he’s definitely a delightful one. But Betsy is clueless too, and when the two of them get stranded on an adrift ship together—the day after Betsy turned down Rollo’s proposal, yikes!—it’s a hoot to watch these two try to figure out how to keep themselves alive. You’ve got to love the first breakfast sequence, where both of them are utterly incapable in the galley. I adore Betsy fussily setting the table with giant serving utensils and Rollo dumping a mountain of sugar in his terrible coffee in an attempt to spare Betsy’s feelings.

They chase away a passing ship because Betsy suggests they get its attention by putting up “the bright” flag, inadvertently signaling that the Navigator is quarantined. When Rollo tries to catch up with the ship in a lifeboat, he first hooks the Navigator to his tiny little boat so he can tow it along with him. Both of them are an absolute wreck trying to get some sleep that first night, and when Betsy falls overboard and Rollo jumps in after her, I laugh out loud as he looks up the long rope ladder in dismay when she faints in his arms.

As the two of them muddle through figuring out ship life together, the edgy awkwardness of the failed proposal and the bickering of overwhelmed survivors gives way to a nice synchronicity. Just as Betsy gets to be hapless and funny like Rollo, she gets to be resourceful too. In the second breakfast sequence, both of them make easy use of the various devices they’ve rigged up in the galley. And while Rollo is the one who puts on the diving suit to make the underwater repairs to the Navigator, Betsy diligently turns the crank to maintain his oxygen supply—even when the ship is attacked, she tenaciously does everything she can to stay at her post.

In a lot of Buster’s movies, the relationship is very simple: Buster’s in love with a pretty girl, something keeps them apart (Buster’s broke, her parents don’t approve, he has a romantic rival, etc.), and after some slapstick heroics on Buster’s part, he manages to win her hand. There isn’t much differentiation between the girls. Betsy and Rollo are different because we watch their relationship grow onscreen through everything they experience together. We see their similarities, both their hapless side at the start of the movie and their more mature side as they develop. In short, we get to see why they like each other. Yes, The Navigator is hilarious and a ton of fun, and I’m sure I’d love it no matter what, but a big reason that it’s one of my favorites is the relationship between Rollo and Betsy.

Some Thoughts on Sherlock Jr.

*Spoilers.*

May 11, 1924—the day Sherlock Jr. was released. Every time I watch this film, I’m struck by how much I love it.  Not only is it an all-around great film with incredible camera work and top-notch gags/stunts from Buster, it also features a very different type of performance from Buster, when his projectionist character falls asleep and imagines himself as a renowned detective in the second half the movie.  Sherlock Jr. himself is a big part of what makes this film wonderful, and he’s what I want to look at today.

In many ways, Sherlock Jr. is everything the projectionist (and, by extension, most of Buster’s characters) is not.  Buster’s usual character is dogged and rootable and endearing, as surprisingly athletic as he is hopelessly clumsy, but what he’s not is smooth.  Sherlock Jr., on the other hand, has suaveness in spades.  Once the dream sequence kicks off, you know from the moment he enters the house with his top hat and cane that you’re seeing a different side of Buster.  And it’s not just the spiffy digs (after all, Buster’s played plenty of dandies)—it’s the way he carries himself with absolute confidence, none of the loping shamble of his ordinary character.

On that front, I can’t even quite put my finger on why it’s so different.  Buster’s typical character isn’t exactly insecure, or even awkward; usually, he’s fumbling and a bit shy, but he’s also very determined and unflappable in the face of ridiculous odds.  He’s not, however, like Sherlock Jr.  It’s all in the walk, the astute gaze, the way he acts like he owns a room. 

And what’s more, he has the skills to back it up.  Sherlock Jr. was dreamed up between the eras of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Ian Fleming, but he’s somehow equal parts Holmes and Bond.  I love his easy command, the way he so frequently owns everybody with this no-big-deal blasé attitude which makes it clear he does this sort of thing all the time.  This quality shows up numerous times—blithely picking the pocket of the crook who takes his watch from him, making the seamless transition from road to aquatic getaway—but it’s best displayed in the billiard game.  Sherlock Jr. sinks every ball in a series of wild shots, neatly avoiding the ball that the bad guys know to be weaponized with a concealed explosive (little do they know, Sherlock Jr. is wise to them and switches the balls when they’re not looking,) and then coolly saunters off, leaving the villains gaping at his feat.

Of course, this same scene also offers up what love best about Sherlock Jr.:  he’s almost equal parts adept and inept.  Leaving the house, he produces the deadly billiard and tosses it casually in the air, but he misses catching it and has to flail around, juggling it pretty wildly to keep it from hitting the ground and blowing him up.  We see this again and again.  His suspect easily leads him off-course, trapping him on a rooftop, but he handily rides a descending railroad-crossing arm back down to street level.  He pulls off the incredible ride on the handlebars of the driverless motorbike, but that’s only because it takes him so long to realize the driver has fallen off.  He’s entirely unable to recognize his own assistant in disguise, and when he and the girl sail across the lake in the floating cab of a car, he doesn’t seem to notice it sinking until they’re already fully in the water.

Since Sherlock Jr. is the projectionist’s dream in which he gets to be the hero, maybe it would have made for sense for him to be perfect, but I love that he’s not.  It says something pretty special about Buster, I think, that the Holmesian proto-Bond smooth customer he creates still makes so many easy mistakes and, despite his effortless cool, is still so relatable and human.

A Few Thoughts on Our Hospitality

*Spoilers.*

November 19, 1923—the day Our Hospitality was released. This is one of my favorites of Buster Keaton’s feature films. So many hilarious jokes and gag sequences, great acting from Buster, and those stunts! I’ve already posted a Top Five Gags and a Favorite Characters post for Willie McKay, so I’m going to riff on other thoughts on the movie today.

One of the things this film really demonstrates is how much talent Buster had for working at both a macro and a micro level. He could do wildly ambitious, complex things, and he could also wring gold from the simplest of concepts. This applies to many aspects of his films, including his comedy, his stunts, and his storytelling.

Throughout the film, both the simple and the complex are repeatedly entwined. The film opens with contextual flashbacks, setting up a tragic backstory for Willie that he’s too young to remember. This may seem like a lot for a slapstick comedy, but in truth, it’s a transparent Hatfields & McCoys sendup, so “feuding families” is the main thing we need to know. But once that’s established, so much of the story’s humor is founded on this one tiny wrinkle: the Canfields want to kill Willie, but their Southern hospitality prevents them from doing it while he’s a guest in their home. This leads us to all manner of gags, from Willie desperately outstaying his welcome to his dismay when Virginia’s sheet music is blown through the open door.

Another simple basis for gags is the train sequence. It’s easy to say, “Willie and Virginia take a long train ride, and everything goes wrong!” It’s plain and to the point. But we also have Buster creating a working replica of George Stephenson’s Rocket locomotive, which fits the 1830s setting, and once he’s got his train, he mines it for everything it’s worth. The General is one thing, but there’s a solid 10-15 minutes of train gags in this movie, and it’s not even about that!  If there’s something funny that can be done with the Rocket, you can be sure that Buster comes up with it. He finds humor in the driver, the carriages, the wood for the furnace, the tracks, the smoke, and more.

The waterfall scene is what the film is most famous for, deservedly so. It’s an incredible scene, featuring magnificent stunts from Buster and a manmade waterfall. I love the hell out of it—I love the whole movie, but this scene is its crowning achievement. At the same time, it’s also the climax of a long sequence of gags that begins with the simple premise of two people tied to different ends of the same rope. This is a classic Buster Keaton “chain of gags” sequence, where one humorous development keeps leading into another and another, although this one has plenty of action mixed in too. Just by introducing this rope, we get Willie’s iconic fourth-wall break when he realizes the Canfield son has fallen off the cliff and is going to yank him down with him. We get the train severing the rope, only for Willie’s end of it to get tangled up in one of the wheels. And yes, we get Willie tying himself to a log, which then starts drifting down the river, only to catch on something at the very brink of the waterfall, allowing him to swing out dramatically in front of it. Just masterful work!