USA 71m Dir: Buster Keaton & Charles Reisner Key Cast: Buster Keaton
Original Screenplay
This film is Buster Keaton at the top of his game. It might not be the best of his films in terms of plot but it's right up there in terms of laughs.
Here Keaton plays William Canfield Jr who goes to meet his father (Ernest Torrance) for the first time as an adult. Canfield Sr is the captain and owner of a dilapidated paddle steamer and has a rival with a much newer boat. The rival has a daughter, Kitty (Marion Byron) that Canfield Jr is attracted to but the two fathers are very much against a relationship.
There isn't a great deal of plot here and this is more like a series of linked sketches, closer in style to Chaplin's films in this sense. It's genuinely funny though with joke after joke being fired at the viewer. Whilst Keaton is often the origin of these jokes Ernest Torrance gets quite a few and there's lots of supporting actors who get to react in an amusing way or 'say' a great one-liner.
The stunt work in this film is particularly excellent. The film features a cyclone and with the use of huge fans the production team essentially just made their own with Keaton zooming through the set suspended from a crane hidden off-camera. It's spectacular stuff and really effective. The film also contains what is probably Keaton's most famous stunt as he stands in exactly the right place for a two-ton building façade to fall around him without getting hurt. It's an iconic moment but one that still stands up today thanks to the lack of trickery and Keaton's bravery in performing the stunt.
The scenario doesn't feel especially original with endless silent comedies focusing on a son who struggles to live up to his father's expectations and there isn't really much of a story here. But the film works by going for extreme stunts and not backing out of them and by being genuinely funny even nigh-on a hundred years later.
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