The Films of Buster Keaton: The Haunted House, Hard Luck & The High Sign (all 1921)

The Haunted House (1921)
Directed by: Buster Keaton & Edward F. Cline.
Written by: Edward F. Cline and Buster Keaton.
Starring: Buster Keaton (Bank Clerk), Virginia Fox (Bank President's Daughter), Joe Roberts (Bank Cashier), Edward F. Cline (Customer in Bank ).

As with most of Keaton’s shorts, 1921’s The Haunted House is a series of gags – some of which work better than others. The film is pretty neatly cut into two halves – the first which has Keaton as an inept bank clerk, who is duped by some counterfeiters (who have a house nearby that they have made the locals think is haunted to keep them away) – but that’s really just there to set up the film’s second half. Most of the first 10 minutes involve Keaton’s adventures with glue, which he basically spills all over everything. Insanity ensures, as Keaton sticks to everything in his the bank – and soon the customers are getting stuck as well. The sequence starts off as inspired lunacy, but after a while, it does start to grow a bit thin – as Keaton starts repeating himself. Thankfully, the film’s second half is better. The police, and the bank president, think that Keaton is responsible for the counterfeit money – so he goes on the run – and ends up – you guessed it – in the haunted house. To make matters more confusing, the cast of a reviled version of Faust is also hiding out from the angry audience in the same house – which is now full of people in ghost and (creepily convincing) skeleton costumes – and a strange man dressed as the devil, who is scared of all of them.

This sequence is remembered mainly for the running gag involving a staircase that can become a slide – that Keaton repeatedly (probably once or twice too many to be honest) slides down, until he finally figures it out. Those sequences, like the glue in the first half, probably go on a little long, but they still work. Even funnier to be is Keaton’s numerous run-ins with the various ghost and skeletons – especially after he figures out they’re not real, and starts messing with them (Keaton does break his Stone Face a few times in fright before he figures it out).

The Haunted House doesn’t come close to Keaton’s best work. It’s basically a two jokes film, and while it’s only twenty minutes long, both jokes are repeated a few too many times – as if Keaton needed to pad the runtime. He also uses the same (hated) clichéd ending that Convict 13 had – although it didn’t bother me as much this time – but it does seem like a crutch for Keaton. When he didn’t know how to wrap everything up, just make it all a dream. It’s not bad – we weren’t watching for the plot anyway.

Hard Luck (1921)

Directed by: Buster Keaton & Edward F. Cline.
Written by: Edward F. Cline and Buster Keaton.
Starring: Buster Keaton (Suicidal Boy), Virginia Fox (Virginia), Joe Roberts (Lizard Lip Luke).

Hard Luck was reportedly one of Keaton’s favorite short films – that for more than 60 years was feared lost. Luckily for us, a nearly complete version was founded and restored in the early 2000s. Unluckily for us, it does not include the final gag of the film that Keaton insisted out the biggest laugh of all his gags – with only a description and a single still surviving. It’s better than nothing.

As it stands, the films best sequence is it’s first – as Keaton plays a depressed man, who has no job, no money, no girl – so he decides to kill himself. In all honesty, I wish the entire 20 minutes was just Keaton trying, and failing, to find ways to do himself in – as his attempts are hilarious. Normally, Keaton plays a character beset on all sides by a world that seems against him – but he soldiers on anyway – which I guess describes his character here as well. He will not be deterred from his desire to end his life.

At some point though, perhaps fearing 20 minutes of attempted suicides would be too much, Keaton switches gears. He gets hired to track down an armadillo for a zoo – that apparently has every other kind of animal. This leads Keaton out to the wild – the best sequence of which has him fishing. He catches a small fish, and decides to use it for bait to catch a bigger one – and then does the same thing again and again until the fish becomes ridiculously big – and he tries one time too often.

He gives up his hunt when he comes across a country club instead. He has his eyes set on Virginia Fox – who invites him on a fox hunt – that Keaton cannot find. Eventually, he has to save everyone from a gang of thieves (and potential rapists – a surprisingly dark turn) – but get spurned yet again. This sets up Keaton’s brilliant final gag (the missing one) – when he missing the pool from the dive dead and leaves a crater in the earth – emerging years later with a surprise.

Hard Luck is at its best in the first sequence as Keaton tries to kill himself. The rest of the movie is lighter – and enjoyable series of gags that don’t rank among Keaton’s best, but are certainly entertaining. I wish the final gag was still intact – if it were, I think Hard Luck may rank higher among Keaton’s shorts. As it stands, it’s somewhere in the middle of the pack – enjoyable from start to finish, with a few moments of inspired brilliance mixed in.

The High Sign (1921)

Directed by: Buster Keaton & Edward F. Cline.
Written by: Buster Keaton & Edward F. Cline.
Starring: Buster Keaton (Our Hero), Bartine Burkett  (Miss Nickelnurser), Charles Dorety (Gang member), Ingram B. Pickett (Tiny Tim), Al St. John (Man on beach during target practice).

The High Sign was apparently the first short that Keaton directed himself, but he was unhappy with the result, so he released the second – the masterwork One Week – first, and held on The High Sign until the following year. While it’s true that The High Sign isn’t among Keaton’s best work – and he was probably wise to ensure his first outing was great – it’s hardly a bad film at all.

The film stars Buster as a man we first see unfolding the newspaper (which becomes ridiculously large) as he looks for a new job. He finds one – as a sharpshooter at a shooting range, that only has one problem – he cannot shoot. He steals a cop’s gun (replacing with a banana) and then goes to the beach to practice. Whatever he aims at his misses – but he hits something else instead. He goes onto the shooting range anyway – and gets his job. Eventually, he’ll get two more jobs – as a member of the Blinking Buzzards gang, where he assigned to kill a rich man, and as a bodyguard for that very same rich man.

The High Sign is enjoyable for its entire 20 minute runtime. Narratively speaking, it’s one that actually flows a little more cleanly than many of Keaton’s short films – with one segment flowing into each other a little more naturally. What there isn’t much of is the jaw dropping stunts that Keaton is known for. The biggest set piece is a huge fight sequence with Keaton and the Blinking Buzzards fighting in the rich man’s house – which involves people falling out windows, through floors. It’s a little more slapsticky than much of Keaton’s work – but it works.

The High Sign is basically an enjoyable little film. I understand why Keaton decided to not use it as his first film released by himself. He wanted to show something that was a little more of himself – and The High Sign, although it has some elements that Keaton is known for, doesn’t reach the heights of something like One Week.

Movie Review: Pompeii

Pompeii
Directed by: Paul W.S. Anderson.
Written by: Janet Scott Batchler & Lee Batchler and Michael Robert Johnson.
Starring: Kit Harington (Milo), Emily Browning (Cassia), Kiefer Sutherland (Corvus), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (Atticus), Jared Harris (Severus), Carrie-Anne Moss (Aurelia), Jessica Lucas (Ariadne), Joe Pingue (Graecus), Currie Graham (Bellator).

There are some things I have to admit that I’ll just never understand. One of them is how director Paul W.S. Anderson has been elevated by some into some sort of great director – or at least a “vulgar auteur”. I didn’t know this was happening, until a small debate raged back in 2012 when Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master and the latest Resident Evil film by Paul W.S. Anderson opened the same weekend – and a vocal minority of critics (Hi Armond!) claimed the later was a masterpiece, while the former was dreck. Cinemascope Magazine, which normally looks down on pretty much all popular movies, even named Paul W.S. Anderson one of the 50 best directors under 50 – and in their review of Pompeii, even bring up Roberto Rossellini’s masterpiece Journey to Italy (1954) as a companion piece to Anderson’s old school “epic”. I’m sorry, but I just don’t see it. There are moments near the end of Pompeii – when the lava starts flowing, that are admittedly beautiful to behold – and for the most part, he does prefer more stable compositions rather than the shaky camera, rapid fire editing of most modern action directors, which render their action sequences largely incoherent. Perhaps if Anderson had a decent script to work with, he may actually make a good movie. So far though, I don’t think he really has.

Pompeii’s most obvious influence is James Cameron’s Titanic (1997), as the first half of the movie is largely taken up with a love story between a slave turned gladiator named Milo (Kit Harington) and the daughter of a wealthy man in Pompeii named Cassia (Emily Browning) – including having a despicable rival, Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland). The second half is all about the people we met in the first half running away from inevitable disaster – not a sinking ship, but an erupting volcano.

If you can ignore pretty much the entire first hour of the movie – which is insufferably written and lazily performed by a cast of actors who all seem to know the movie is nothing but a pay cheque and don’t even try, than Pompeii does offer some great images in the final act, after the volcano erupts, and starts destroying everything in its path. When the movie completely ignores its human characters, and just focuses on destruction – as it does in the wonderful sequence where the harbor is destroyed – I can at least partly see why Anderson has so many defenders. It is a wonderful sequence – and most of his movies have at least one of those.

But is sitting through 90 minutes of almost pure crap worth it to see one great sequence? Anderson has yet to get a credible performance from an actor that I can recall, he’s yet to tell a coherent satisfying story. He doesn’t seem interested in them at all. This would less of a problem if there were more great moments in his movies, and if on a surface level of plot and character, he wasn’t so horrible.

Anderson’s Pompeii is essentially a tragic love story, where two people fall in love, and have that love ripped apart before it can even really get started. Say what you want about Cameron’s Titanic, but all the flaws in that movie could not take away from the tragic emotions in which the love story between DiCaprio and Winslet live though, and its devastating final moment. In Pompeii, Anderson doesn’t seem to care that much – the tragic end is just another excuse to put some special effects on the screen. And if he doesn’t care, why should we? We’re 20 years into Anderson’s directing career, and Anderson continues to do his thing. He has defenders – and good for them. I still don’t see it though – and at this rate, I don’t think I ever will.

Movie Review: The Immigrant

The Immigrant
Directed by: James Gray.
Written by: James Gray & Richard Menello.
Starring: Marion Cotillard (Ewa Cybulska), Joaquin Phoenix (Bruno Weiss), Jeremy Renner (Orlando the Magician / Emil), Dagmara Dominczyk (Belva), Jicky Schnee (Clara), Elena Solovey (Rosie Hertz), Maja Wampuszyc (Edyta Bistricky), Ilia Volok (Wojtek Bistricky), Angela Sarafyan (Magda Cybulska), Antoni Corone (Customs Officer Thomas MacNally).

James Gray specializes in the type of films that are slowly disappearing from American filmmaking. He doesn’t make big films, but he doesn’t make tiny indies either – he makes the mid-level film, that is slowly being squeezed out of existence for all but the biggest names. He is now 19 years – and five films – into a distinctive career, that while it has not yet produced a masterpiece, has also not yet produced an uninteresting film. The Immigrant is probably his most ambitious film to date – a period piece, set in 1920s New York and centered on a Polish immigrant named Ewa Cybulska (Marion Cotillard) who comes to America with her sister and big dreams, gets used and abused, but never really gives up hope. The film is a slow burner – one that takes its time, and gets to know its two main characters inside and out, and forces us to re-evaluate what we think we know about them several times. The period detail is excellent, but this is not a typical costume drama, that we can watch from a distance – like the recent Belle for example – but one whose stakes feel genuine – not like we’re looking backwards in time, but as if we’re confronting the characters head on. I think it’s the best film Gray has made to date.

The first scene of the movie takes place on Ellis Island, with Ewa and her sister Magda in line for processing. Magda is coughing, and is pulled out of line and sent to the infirmary. If she doesn’t get better within six months, she’ll be deported. Ewa is flagged as well when she gets to the front of the line. Her Uncle and Aunt are not there to greet them, like they were supposed to be. There was an “incident” on the boat ride over that flags Ewa as a “woman of low morals”. The processing officer tags as “likely to become a ward of the state” and puts her in the rejects line. She’ll be deported back to Poland.

And that’s when she meets Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix). He’s been watching these girls, and picks Ewa out. He tells her that he can pull some strings to get her into the country. He has a job for her, a place to stay – and he’ll even help her take care of her sister – and eventually get her out as well. It seems too good to be true – which of course it is. Bruno runs an act out of a low rent nightclub of dancing girls in various stages of undress. If the price is right than these are not just dancing girls but prostitutes as well. He sees “something special” in Ewa – and may ever love her. But that doesn’t stop him from pimping her out.

In many ways, the plot outline for The Immigrant sounds like a silent melodrama from the era it is depicting – an innocent, saintly girl gets off the boat, and is taken advantage of my a moustache twirling villain. There is even a “good guy” who wants to “take Ewa away” from her sordid lifestyle in the form of Emil (Jeremy Renner) – a magician she first meets on Ellis Island, who is also Bruno’s cousin and rival. But The Immigrant isn’t as simple as that – Ewa is not quite the saint, Bruno more complicated than pure villain, and Emil isn’t a straight ahead good guy.

The incident on the boat haunts most of the movie – it comes up time and again as a way of thwarting whatever happiness Ewa may achieve. We do not learn what the incident was until fairly late in the movie – but the ambiguity of it for most of the running time, plus what we see Ewa is willing (however begrudging – and at first only when drunk) is willing to do, doesn’t qualify her for sainthood. She is a Catholic girl – who wants to be good – but is also a realist. No matter what, she wants to protect her sister – and she’s willing to do just about anything to do that. She never loses our sympathy however – she is a woman trapped in a world where men make the rules, and can take everything away from her at any time, and she’s powerless to stop them. Her relationship with Bruno is complicated – she hates him, but also loves him in some way – she cannot bring herself to walk away from him. Cotillard’s performance is one of her best – especially in her quietest moments. Gray loves close-ups on her beautiful face, where she is asked to do a lot with little dialogue. It’s a complex web of emotions she feels throughout the movie. Bruno is another complex character and performance for Phoenix – who makes him despicable, jealously, cruel, kind, sympathetic and abhorrent all at the same time. Our impression of Ewa doesn’t really change throughout the movie – she’s a victim, who is trying her best not to be one – but our impression of Bruno changes sometimes on a scene by scene level. What’s remarkable about Phoenix’s performance is that it never seems to contradict itself. His Bruno encompasses these contradictions, but they add up to a whole character. Jeremy Renner is the weakest link of the central trio – not really because of his performance (he’s effortlessly charming throughout) – but because he has the least complex role. He is precisely who he seems to be from the introduction of his character to the end.

The Immigrant is a slowly paced film – it’s a film without much of a plot. Instead, it’s focus remains squarely on his characters – and by the pair of extraordinary performances at its core. Phoenix has long since been Gray’s go-to actor – appearing in each of his last four films. One of his greatest performances – oft-overlooked because it was on the press tour for it that he did his whole performance art, rapper thing – was in Two Lovers. He outdoes that performance here. Gray’s film is a different sort of costume drama. It’s New York is dirty, grimy and filthy. His view of America is far more cynical (and realistic) than most immigrant stories. It’s a dark movie, but an excellent one. Even in a summer where many of the big budget entertainments have been good – The Immigrant is still something refreshingly different.

Movie Review: Edge of Tomorrow

Edge of Tomorrow
Directed by: Doug Liman.
Written by: Christopher McQuarrie and Jez Butterworth & John-Henry Butterworth based on the novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Starring: Tom Cruise (Cage), Emily Blunt (Rita), Brendan Gleeson (General Brigham), Bill Paxton (Master Sergeant Farell), Jonas Armstrong (Skinner), Tony Way (Kimmel), Kick Gurry (Griff), Franz Drameh (Ford), Dragomir Mrsic (Kuntz), Charlotte Riley (Nance), Terence Maynard (Cruel Sergeant), Noah Taylor (Dr. Carter).

It’s been a reasonably good summer blockbuster season so far – although we’re only a month into what will be a four month marathon, where every week brings another hugely expensive blockbuster, so there’s still time for us to get sick of them. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was a little weak – simply because it’s essentially repeating what four other Spider-Man movies did, but was still entertaining. Godzilla may have sacrificed it’s human characters a little, but as large scale spectacle, it’s tough to beat. X-Men: Days of Future Past didn’t fall into the same trap that Spider-Man did and simply repeat what was done before – but tried for something different – and mainly succeeded. Maleficent was disappointing, but only because it seemed like it was reaching for something greater than it initially seemed, and then came up short. But out of all the blockbusters so far, Edge of Tomorrow is probably my favorite – the only one not based on an existing product, and one that really does seem to be trying for something unique and different. The film feels like it was based on a videogame – although it wasn’t – and is the only film I can think of that really captures the feel of playing a video game – dying and re-spawning over and over again, as the game tries to learn what they need to do to survive – and make it further in the game. This may sound like the movie would become repetitive and dull – but the screenplay, direction and performances keep that from happening – cleverly finding new twists, dark humor and ways to keep things moving along at a rapid pace. This is the most fun I’ve had at the movies in a while.

The movie opens with a lightning quick explanatory sequence – some brief news footage which talks about a meteor hit, and then ensuing invasion by an alien force known as “mimics” who have been marauding through Europe for five years now – seemingly unstoppable. That was until the battle of Verdun – where a hero emerged – Rita (Emily Blunt) who, as the footage repeatedly tells us with “new technology and little training” she was able to whip out hundreds of mimics in one battle. The allies are now planning one final, D-Day like attack on the mimics in Europe, which they think will succeed spectacularly, and end the mimic war. They’re wrong.

Tom Cruise stars as William Cage – a character who reminded me of James Garner’s character in Arthur Hiller and Paddy Chayefsky’s underrated The Americanization of Emily – where he played a character who is very good at his job as a PR hack, who is a coward when tasked with filming the action on D-Day. That’s what Cage faces as well – he’s called into the office of General Brigham (Brendan Gleason) and told he’ll be on the frontlines, filming the action. Cage doesn’t handle the situation well – and instead of doing that, he’s assigned to be an actual soldier on the frontlines. He is assigned to J-Company, under the leadership of Master Sergeant Farrell (an amusing Bill Paxton) – and isn’t expected to last long. He doesn’t – but right before he’s killed, he kills a mimic and is covered in his blood. This allows him to hijack the mimics power – the capability of “resetting” time every time he dies, so that he’s once again assigned to J-Company, and once again screws up, once again dies, and once again re-spawns. He meets Rita on the beach, and she figures out what is happening to him – because it happened to her before. She tells him to “find me when you wake up” – and eventually the two pair up and tries to win the war – with him remembering everything that happened, and she having to start fresh every day.

I liked pretty much everything about the first and second acts of Edge of Tomorrow. The quick explanatory section over the opening credits is really all you need to become engrossed in the world, and that’s all the movie gives you. Once it explains its concept once, it doesn’t dwell on it over and over again, but just immerses the audience in the action over and over – with slight changes. Sometimes when we think we’re seeing something for the first time, it turns out it’s happened many times before, and we only catch up when Rita does. The movie takes a disappointingly generic and predictable turn in the final act – but it’s one that seems necessary to satisfy the demands of the market to have large scale action at the end of every movie – and if I’m being honest, I have no idea how else they could have ended the movie (the movie does make up for this disappointingly predictable turn a little bit by having a great final scene).

As Angelina Jolie showed last week in Maleficent, Tom Cruise shows this week why we still do need movie stars in movies like this. Cruise doesn’t have the complexity in his role that Jolie had in that film – but he immediately establishes a screen presence in the film, and his character is never lost in the midst of all the special effects laden excitement. This isn’t easy to do (see everyone in Godzilla for an example of how to become completely overwhelmed by special effects) – and Cruise shows everyone else how it’s done. It’s not a great performance, but it’s a great “movie star performance” – which is what the film needs. I have no idea why the filmmakers chose Blunt to play Rita (perhaps they were fans of Julie Andrews in The Americanization of Emily) – because I don’t remember seeing her in an action film before, but Blunt is great as Rita – full of steely resolve, but also a sense of confusion and frustration. She had Cage’s power once, and lost it. Now she’s stuck trying to figure out new, every day, what exactly is going on. The best supporting performance, far and away, is by Bill Paxton – who is having a great deal of fun as Farrell. Add this to his memorable work last year in 2 Guns (the only memorable thing about that movie) – and I think it’s safe to say no one is having more fun in action movies right now than Paxton.

The film was directed by Doug Liman – who has had an interesting, up and down career so far. He has directed two large hits in the past – The Bourne Identity and Mr. and Mrs. Smith – although both were apparently plagued by cost and schedule overruns, and second unit directors doing more of their share of the work (if you believe the rumors at least). At his best – like his earlier films, especially Go (1999), his films have a propulsive energy that keeps things moving from one scene to the next rapidly, never slowing down or missing a beat. He does that in Edge of Tomorrow – this film moves quickly. It also has a dark sense of humor – it has Tom Cruise die in any number of strange ways, sometimes played for laughs (the first time he tries to roll under the truck being the best).

In what has already been a rather good summer for big spectacles, I think Edge of Tomorrow is the best so far. It will have more competition – weekly – but it’s rare to have a movie of this size also have the intelligence that this one does – a film that takes a science fiction premise (or rips off Groundhog Day depending on your perceptive) and runs with it full bore. I had more fun watching Edge of Tomorrow than I’ve had at the movies in a while – but there’s also something a little bit more here. It’s not quite a great movie – the third act does that – but it’s great summer entertainment.

Criticwire Survey: Meeting Movies on Their Own Terms

Q: Many of the positive reviews for "The Fault in Our Stars" boil down to either "It's good for what it is" or "It gets the job done." But in an essay at Slate that deals in part with John Green's source novel, Ruth Graham says that one of the reasons more adult readers have turned to Young Adult novels is because it offers the pleasures of literary fiction without its challenges: "Adults," she writes, "should feel embarrassed about reading literature written for children." So, as a critic, what's your feeling about measuring a movie—whether it's "The Fault in Our Stars" or "X-Men: Days of Future Past" — against what it sets out to do as opposed to what it could do? (Likewise, do you damn "Orange Is the New Black" for not being "Oz"?) Do you take it on its own terms, or do you set your own?

I haven’t seen The Fault in Our Stars yet (tomorrow most likely, unless my Kings go too far into overtime tonight, and I’m too tired to make the late show tomorrow) so I cannot address that movie specifically. But in general, I do try and take a movie on its own terms, while offering at least some of my own terms to the mix as well. When I reviewed the recent “Legends of Oz” movie for example, I did note that the film really did seem to involve my two and a half year old daughter from beginning to end – even scaring her in parts – while still acknowledging that I thought the movie was crap from my perspective. So if the filmmakers wanted nothing more than to produce a time waster for small children then then succeeded, even if the movie is a dismal failure in most respects. What I try to do in a review is let the reader know if he or she will like the movie, even if I didn’t and vice versa (I quite enjoyed Post Tenebras Lux last year for instance – but know many would not). I did read Ruth Graham’s piece, and for the most part I do agree with it. I have read some YA books in recent years before the movies based on them came out – I was embarrassed as hell to be reading the Twilight and Divergent books (which were dreadful and not very good respectively) – but did quite enjoy The Hunger Games novels, and wasn’t really embarrassed by reading them. Her general point however is that adults shouldn’t just embrace YA novels at the expense of richer, more complex novels aimed at adults – and that’s very much true.

 
Great movies transcend their genres – and should be able to win over converts outside their target demographic – Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight was able to do that, as was Sam Mendes Skyfall or last year’s young adult romance starring Shailene Woodley – The Spectacular Now. They do this by tapping into something deeper than most in the genre go for. There’s nothing wrong with making a movie that doesn’t have the same ambition (accept if NO ONE had that ambition, film would become boring rather quickly), but I think as a critic, you need to make an effort to meet a film half way. I cannot be anyone other than myself though – so even if a legion of teenage girls loves Twilight, I cannot praise a film that made me role my eyes nearly constantly. While I think a critic needs to meet a film halfway – I think the film needs to do the same.

The Films of Buster Keaton: One Week, Convict 13, The Scarecrow, Neighbors (all 1920)

One Week (1920)
Directed by: Buster Keaton & Edward F. Cline.
Written by: Buster Keaton & Edward F. Cline.
Starring: Buster Keaton (The Groom), Sybil Seely (The Bride), Joe Roberts (Piano Mover).

One Week is Keaton’s first real movie – and one of his greatest shorts. Keaton stars as a young man who has just gotten married – and after a brief car chase (included a dangerous looking motorcycle stunt, where Keaton is straddling two cars, when a motorcycle drives between them, taking him along with it), they arrive at their “new home” – purchased for them by his uncle. To Keaton’s surprise, it’s not a home – yet. Just a bunch of numbered boxes that he has to assemble himself – being careful not to mix up the order of the box. His previous rival for his wife’s affection, re-numbers the boxes on Keaton – and the resulting house is a hilariously crooked mess. When a storm hits, the house spins around on the ground – and eventually Keaton will find out that he actually built the house on the wrong side of the street and has to move it. Amazingly, there is no model work in the film. Keaton actually built the house on a turntable so it could spin. And he and his wife really are trying to push the house across the street.

The film is the first time we really get to see Keaton doing what he does best. Keaton’s great Stone Face is on full display here – as he takes every mounting disaster in stride, and tries to make the best of it. The film is full of Keaton’s patent slapstick – including a moment when he runs out of a bathroom door and falls two stories (one of the only times he actually hurt himself making a movie). There is also an amazing sequence where one of the walls of the house starts spinning – and will eventually fall – which would result in Keaton being crushed, except of course, that Keaton happens to be standing right where the window is (Keaton would reuse this now infamous gag in Steamboat Bill Jr).

What One Week makes clear is right from the beginning, Keaton knew what types of films he wanted to make. He would continue to hone his skills, and his gags, throughout his career, but One Week still stands as one of his best two reelers – a film that packs more laughs, and jaw dropping stunts, than most feature comedies do today. In short, it’s a short masterwork by Keaton.

Convict 13 (1920)

Directed by: Buster Keaton & Edward F. Cline.
Written by: Buster Keaton & Edward F. Cline.
Starring: Buster Keaton (Golfer Turned Prisoner, Guard), Sybil Seely (Socialite, Warden's Daughter), Joe Roberts (The Crazed Prisoner), Edward F. Cline (Hangman), Joe Keaton (Prisoner).

One Week showed Keaton at his best, but his follow-up, Convict 13, is one of his more lackluster shorts – a two

reeler with a few good sight gags, that nevertheless never really achieves the comic momentum needed to make it a truly memorable film. The film is contrived (including a clichéd ending that was already a tired cliché in 1920) – but it does have its moments.

In the film, Keaton stars as a golfer, trying desperately hard to impress Sybil Seely – despite the fact that he’s awful at the game. When he hits a ball off a building, and it ricochets back into his head, he gets knocked unconscious. An escaped convict, lurking nearby, takes the opportunity to switch clothes with Keaton – who is surprised when he wakes up and tries to continue his golf game, and finds himself being chased by police. He thinks he has escaped – only to discover he’s actually locked himself in the prison they want to take him to.

The film contains a lot more lowbrow, slapstick humor than most of Keaton’s work. Instead of elaborately staged stunts, we get a lot of people being smacked in the head by mallets and falling down. Even the big comic set piece – where Keaton is supposed to be hanged, only to discover the rope has been replaced by an elastic exercise band by Seely (who had tried to convince her father, the warden, not to execute Keaton) – resulting not in Keaton being hanged, but bouncing around like a dummy (which the person at the end of the rope clearly is) – feels phony and more staged than most of Keaton’s best gags. The prison riot that ends the film – and has Keaton, now dressed as a guard (the result of another knockout) foiling it – is almost cruelly violent, full of people getting shot, and convicts gathering around a fallen guard and beating with hammers. It’s hard to laugh at that one.

The best moments then are the small ones – including the priceless look on Keaton’s face when he realizes he has locked himself inside the prison. A few moments of him playing golf at the beginning were also quite funny. But overall Convict 13 feels like a cruder Keaton vehicle than normal – one that is somewhat beneath him.

The Scarecrow (1920)

Directed by: Buster Keaton & Edward F. Cline.
Written by: Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline.
Starring: Buster Keaton (Farmhand), Joe Roberts (Farmhand), Sybil Seely (Farmer's Daughter), Edward F. Cline (Hit-and-Run Truck Driver), Joe Keaton (Farmer), Al St. John (Man with Motorbike).

Buster’s Keaton’s genius for invention is on full display for the first half of The Scarecrow. Along with frequent co-star, Joe Roberts, Keaton plays a farmhand and shares a house with Roberts. When the pair sit down for breakfast, they bring down a series of pulleys from the ceiling that allows them to get whatever they need for their meal. If you need something from the fridge – no problem, the pulleys will do it. When they finish, everything packs away nicely out of sight. The sequence is not all one unbroken take (I imagine that would have been too hard to pull off) – but the takes are still fairly long, meticulously choreographed and ingenious. Watching Keaton’s films is often like playing spot the reference to later films – and here, I couldn’t help but the elaborate system that Aardman’s Wallace & Grommet have in their home.

As is often the case, even in a two reeler like this, The Scarecrow has a bare bones plot that ties together a series of gags. The elaborately constructed kitchen set is the best – and most famous – of the gags Keaton does in the film, but there is more here than just that. Perhaps the sequence where a mad dog chases Keaton around goes on a little too long, but it’s still hilarious. While Keaton (deservingly) always gets credit for his daring in making his films, how about some love for the dog – who climbs a ladder, and chases Keaton around atop the not very wide walls of a dilapidated structure. The sequence also allows Keaton to get another few laughs out of his ridiculously outfitted house.

It’s only near the end that the romantic plot of the movie comes out – as Keaton and Roberts are both in love with the farmer’s daughter (Sybil Seely again). It’s in a scene here that the film gets its name – as Keaton disguises himself as a scarecrow, which makes it easier for him to turn his rivals against each other.

The sequence in the house – especially at breakfast – is as ingenious and inventive as anything Keaton has ever done in his shorts. The rest of the film cannot really reach the same level – it’s more standard issue Keaton craziness – which is still hilarious. Overall, the film doesn’t quite reach the heights of Keaton’s best shorts – but it comes damn close.

Neighbors (1920)

Directed by: Buster Keaton & Edward F. Cline.
Written by: Buster Keaton & Edward F. Cline.
Starring: Buster Keaton (The Boy), Virginia Fox (The Girl), Joe Roberts (Her Father), Joe Keaton (His Father), Edward F. Cline (The Cop).

Neighbors shows Keaton at his most inventive and daring. The story is typical Keaton – he plays an earnest young man in love with the girl who lives on the other side of the fence from him. Their parents hate each other though, and they are forbidden from seeing each other – a love note that gets passed back and forth, so at one point one of each sets of parents thinks the other is cheating on them doesn’t help matters. So Keaton takes matters into his own hands – and tries to rescue the girl from the hands of her brutish father.

The best gags in Neighbors revolve around Keaton on a clothesline that runs between the two houses. In the films best gag, Keaton thinks he has escaped the grasp of the girl’s father when he flings himself out the window onto the clothesline to take him safely to his house – only to realize the clothesline spins around and lands him right back in danger (this is of what is known as the Keaton curve – where Keaton thinks he has escaped, but ends up right back where he started from – he does it a lot in his films). Keaton’s precise framing of the clothes line gags is brilliant – allowing him to do the stunts with no need of cutting, which makes them all the more impressive.

Another great gag has three men, each on another shoulders, walking from Keaton’s house to the neighbors – and each leaping into another window to hide from her father – and eventually escaping, the same way. Again, this is all done in one shot, and one marvels at just how exactly it was pulled off.

There are more standard jokes in Neighbors as well – though they work – like Keaton going to his wedding at the end of film without suspenders or a belt, and has to keep a tight grasp on his pants to keep them from falling down. If Neighbors is marred in anyway, it’s in one of the ways typical of movies from its time period – a casual, thoughtless series of somewhat racist jokes. Keaton ends up with a dirty face, and chased by the police, who think he’s a black man – only to let Keaton go when he’s able to clean his face, and instead grabs another black man in his place – but ending up with Keaton again, when his face, once again becomes dirty. To be fair to Keaton, he’s not really in black face – and neither are the actual black characters (who appear to be played by African Americans) – though they are undeniably rather offensive caricatures (especially the woman whose eyes bulge out of her skull at one point). This is one of those things you have to accept when watching movies from this period – and Neighbors is far from the worst example (it’s actually relatively tame in comparison to other movies) – although that doesn’t make it any better.

Still, other than that, Neighbors ranks highly on the list of Keaton shorts – an early example of his brilliance, with brilliant set pieces, and a relentless comic pacing for 20 minutes.

Classics Revisited: A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
Directed by: Charles Crichton.
Written by: John Cleese.
Starring: John Cleese (Archie Leach), Jamie Lee Curtis (Wanda Gershwitz), Kevin Kline (Otto), Michael Palin (Ken Pile), Maria Aitken (Wendy), Tom Georgeson (Georges Thomason), Patricia Hayes (Mrs. Coady).

A Fish Called Wanda is frequently named one of the funniest movies of all time. When AFI did their 100 Years, 100 Laughs series in 2000 – it placed 21^st overall – ahead of such classics as This is Spinal Tap or anything made by Charlie Chaplin. I saw the film once, way back in high school, and enjoyed it immensely – but in the years since never really had an urge to revisit it. When the excellent film site The Dissolve announced it as their movie of the week, I decided to re-watch it (something that you will see as a kind of recurring theme among these classics revisited posts). Watching it again, all these years later, I once again enjoyed the film immensely. It is a perfectly structured comedy – a deliberate throwback to the Ealing comedies of the 1940s and ‘50s, directed by one of that studio's veterans, Charles Crichton. By casting two Americans among the four principal cast members, the film also became a classic American vs. Brits comedy. And yet, I still cannot fully get on board with A Fish Called Wanda being called one of the greatest comedies of all time – at least for me. Comedy, perhaps more than any other film genre, is very subjective. What causes one person to fall into fits of hysterical laughter can leave another person cold. I was not left cold by A Fish Called Wanda – it is frequently very, very funny, is endlessly quotable, and contains a number of fine performances. And yet, if you asked me to name the funniest films I have ever seen, A Fish Called Wanda would be fairly far down the list.

The film wastes no time in establishing who its four main characters are. Archie Leach (John Cleese) is a stiff upper lipped lawyer, who we see briefly arguing and winning a trial. Wanda (Jamie Lee Curtis) is a scheming American thief, smart, capable and sexy. Her cohort is Otto (Kevin Kline), who fancies himself an intellectual who reads Nietzsche, but is really an idiot. Ken (Michael Palin) is a stuttering animal lover, who obsesses over his fish. The later three have been brought together by Georges Thomason (played by Tom Georgeson – which I just find amusing) to steal some diamonds. The robbery goes off without a hitch, but then the double crosses start. Otto, who is in cahoots with Wanda, who he thinks he is dating, but who Ken and Georges thinks is her brother, phones a tip into the police saying Georges is responsible for the robbery. But when they go to the safe house to recover the loot, they find it has already been moved. Ken has the key to a safety deposit box, but doesn’t know where it is located. Georges may trade the jewels for a reduced sentence, so Wanda attempts to get close to Archie, his lawyer, to try and find out if that is going to happen – and also if Georges suspects Otto or herself as the source of the police tip. Hilarity ensues.

And much of A Fish Called Wanda is hilarious. I could describe the jokes, but what would the point of that be? What I will say is that all four main performances are in their own way wonderful. Cleese, who wrote the screenplay, casts himself as the straight man – everyone around him is going insane, and he tries his best to maintain his dry, British demeanor. He is trapped in a loveless marriage to Wendy (Maria Aitken), so when a sexy, young Yank like Wanda takes interest in him, he has no problem believing it to be true and not questioning her motives. Curtis for her part has never been better – she’s sexy to be sure, and someone who all the men view at various times as a sex object, but the movie never views her as such. She’s the smartest one in the room, juggling multiple lies and deceptions, and doing so effortlessly. Palin is hilarious as the stuttering Ken – nowhere more so than when he is assigned by Georges to kill the old lady who is a witness against him, and ends up killing her three dogs – one at a time – instead. A Fish Called Wanda is not afraid of black comedy – which makes it even better.

Best of all has to be Kevin Kline as Otto. Amazingly, Kline won an Oscar for his performance in the movie – and although it was a weak year in supporting actor that year (seriously how many people even watched all six hours of Little Dorrit, and Alec Guinness in it? Does anyone want to make the case for Dean Stockwell in Married to the Mob or Martin Landau in Tucker: The Man and His Dream? Perhaps River Phoenix in Running on Empty, but at the time, he was the young upstart – and the Academy always makes them wait for their Oscar) it’s hard to argue that Kline didn’t deserve to win. What’s remarkable is that I cannot think of another performance this broadly comedic to win an Oscar in the modern era. It’s an excellent performance from start to finish by Kline – from his mounting anger at being called stupid, his hilariously horrible Italian, to his gay come-ons to Ken to throw him off the truth and perhaps best of all the worst movie sex I can recall in a movie, Kline nails every moment. Still, this is a comedic performance that ends in him literally being run over by a steamroller – and surviving. Kline practically plays a live action Looney Tunes character in the movie. I love the fact that Kline won an Oscar for this performance – yet still cannot believe he did.

The direction by Charles Crichton is excellent as well. He lets scenes play out at their own pace, he doesn’t try to juice the action along with fancy editing, preferring longer takes to let the actors build the comic momentum. Comedies would be better today if more directors followed his lead.

I’ve spent most of this review praising A Fish Called Wanda. It deserves all the praise. I cannot think of a single element of the film that’s really worthy of an extended criticism or smack down. It all works. And yet, I also still cannot quite say that A Fish Called Wanda is one of my favorite comedies. It is hilarious in many ways, with great performances, a witty script and top notch direction. Yet, would I rank it as the 21^st best comedy of all time or even close to that? I wouldn’t. This is more of a problem with expectations than anything else. When you hear Roger Ebert comparing the film to The Producers and This is Spinal Tap, you expect this to be a comedy like that – one that endlessly re-watchable, and have you in stiches each time you see it. For many, A Fish Called Wanda is a film like that. For me, it isn’t. I enjoyed every aspect of the film – just not quite as much as everyone else seems to.