The Frozen North (1922)

Well, that's not exactly the best Buster Keaton film, but apparently it's incomplete, and he made it while rather upset about what really does seem to have been an unfair and unjust prosecution of his good friend Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.

The film looks good, with location filming and real snow in a part of California that really does look like California. And Keaton's facial comic acting is as peerless as ever. Many of the skits work well. But it's weird and unsettling seeing Keaton as a baddie, the sort of man who holds up a casino, shoots dead who he thinks is his cheating wife, and generally goes around not being very nice. No wonder the film isn't better known.

Still, I'll admit that, while I'm no newcomer to silent comedy shorts, they're probably best experienced in a cinema with a live pianist. The film may be silent, but the experience probably shouldn't be. Certainly the humour itself is no less fresh a century later.

Not the best of its kind that I've seen, then. All the same, a relatively bad Buster Keaton film is a Buster Keaton film nonetheless, and I was suitably amused. The film can of course be found easily and legally online.

Sherlock, Jr. (1924)

I haven't blogged a silent comedy for years, so here's Buster Keaton in what may be his most famous film. I've blogged one of his shorts before- Neighbours- but this is my first proper look at his work. Incidentally, it’s also the first time I’ve seen actors introduced on the intertitles after they first appear, not a bad idea.

First impressions are that Keaton himself is brilliant at comic facial acting, as you’d imagine. Second impressions are that the humour is reminiscent of what you’d think of today as cartoon humour, and there are lots of amusing moments but the film is clearly not renowned specifically for its humour. It’s often funny, but many silent comedies are funnier.

There are little jarring reminders of just how long ago 1924 was- the spelling “to-day”and pianos in cinemas. But much else feels surprisingly timeless, not least the humour. And the most impressive thing about the film is, of course, the violence done to the fourth wall as the Keaton character dreams his dreamy little dream and there’s an extraordinary sequence of him walking into the cinema screen amongst various different scenes. And the comical centre of the film- the attempts of “Sherlock Jr” to solve a crime while the culprits try to kill him by, among other things, blowing him up with an exploding pool ball, is both laugh out loud funny and utterly surreal, along with the extraordinary chase sequence at the end. All these scenes are enormous technical accomplishments.

No more than quite good as a comedy, then, despite Keaton’s personal talent. But the film is surreal, groundbreaking and splendidly weird. I think my next silent comedy won’t be after so large a gap.

Neighbours (1920)

This is only my second foray into silent comedy and, a couple of programmes presented by Paul Merton which I saw many years ago aside, my first experience of the great Buster Keaton. I've no idea whether this film is particularly well-regarded or not: I just happened to see it.

This is very much like a Warner Brothers cartoon, or rather Warner Brothers cartoons are very much like this: the laws of physics are very much the same, and trees even a company called Acme. I very much get the sense, though, that behind the humour lies the harshness of life for the have-nots of the early twentieth century. The physical comedy is masterful: Keaton himself is a comic genius, and the slapstick is awesomely choreographed and arranged. I can see why, on this evidence, that visual comedy has never reached these heights since the advent of sound.

And yet.. this sort of humour isn't really my thing. Still, I'll try a few more silent comedies before I write them off.