Directed by: Buster Keaton & Donald Crisp.
Written by: Clyde Bruckman & Joseph A. Mitchell and Jean C. Havez.
Starring: Buster Keaton (Rollo Treadway), Kathryn McGuire (Betsy O'Brien), Frederick Vroom (John O'Brien).
The
Navigator was the biggest hit of Keaton’s career – really the film that made
him a bigger star, got him an extended contact and the clout to make the type
of bigger films – like the upcoming The General – that he really wanted to
make. It is still considered one of Keaton’s masterpieces - it is one of the
seven Keaton features to make the They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They top 1,000
films of all-time list. Yet even though I think it is hilarious in many parts,
it has never really been close to the top of my favorite Keaton films. It is a
notch or two below the likes of Our Hospitality, Sherlock Jr. or The General.
The film is non-stop, inventive sight gags from beginning to end – and yet I think
that sometimes its comic momentum lags a little bit – set pieces drag on a
little too long, nowhere more than near the end the conflict with the natives
which has multiple stages – and every time you think it’s reached its endpoint,
it just keeps going. For many comedic directors, The Navigator would rank as
their best film – with Keaton, as great as the film is, it isn’t really close.
Keaton
plays pampered millionaire Rollo Treadway who, as the title cards tell us, is
proof that “every family tree has its sap”. He isn’t very bright – he looks out
the window one day and see a couple getting married and decides he wants to do
that too – and today! He has his manservant book his honeymoon cruise to the
Pacific, and then heads across the street to ask Betsy (Kathryn O’Brien) to
marry him – and she promptly rejects him. Later that night, he’ll head down to
the docks to take his honeymoon anyway – and gets on the wrong boat. She also
heads down to the docks to talk to him – and gets stuck on the same boat. It
turns out that the large ocean liner is being used as a pawn in a war between
two small European nations – one who just bought the boat, and the other who
wants to ensure they never get to use it – so they cut the boat loose. When
Keaton and McGuire wake up the next day – after an hilarious sequence where
they keep barely missing each other - they discover they are the only two on
board. As both are spoiled rich kids, they have no idea how to do anything –
making coffee out of seawater for example. But eventually, the two have the
ship humming (in a nod to Keaton’s short film, The Scarecrow, he has the
kitchen made up with a series of pulleys to make everything go much easier).
There
is nothing wrong with the visual gags in The Navigator – all of which are
expertly handled, from Keaton and McGuire constantly missing each other on that
first morning, to them screwing up breakfast, to a sequence where they both
think, for differing reasons, the ship is haunted, to various daring water
rescues and falls to their extended conflict with a tribe of cannibals –
including an hilarious sequence where Keaton pulls around a small cannon by his
foot. The best sequence may well be Keaton underwater, in one of those huge
deep sea diving suits, which includes a sequence so ridiculous it borders on
the sublime – when he uses one sword fish to fence with another. The chemistry
between Keaton and McGuire in this film is perhaps the best of any film Keaton
made (although I admit that could be because I think McGuire is absolutely
adorable in her sailor suit). In many of Keaton’s films, the girl just seems to
love him for no apparent reason – here we see her slowly fall for Keaton, as
his stone faced, dogged determination finally wins her over when he’s not
trying to.
Yet the
best Keaton films, I think, are more than just a series of gags – they use the
plot to enhance those gags, and that’s where I think The Navigator is a notch
of two below Keaton’s very best. The film never seems like anything more than
just a series of isolated sight gags – so it never quite builds the same
momentum his best films do. Throw in the fact that the end of the film is
basically a deus ex machine that Keaton and company came up when they realized
they had written themselves into a corner and had no way of getting out, and
the film just doesn’t quite seem as great as Keaton’s best.
But
punishing a film like The Navigator, which in so many ways is inventive and
hilarious, simply for not quite being as good as Keaton’s best work doesn’t
quite seem fair. This is still a wonderful film – just not quite as good as the
best comedies made by the arguably the best director of comedy in film history.
When you look at it like that, that hardly seems like an insult at all.
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