Rent Buster Keaton: The Saphead / The High Sign / One Week (1922)
3.5 of 5 from 8 ratings
1h 58min
- General info
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- Synopsis:
Manic stunt work, elaborate sight gags and mind-boggling mechanical comedy are just some of Keaton's work featured in these movies. Known the world round as the 'Stone' face comedy actor, with charming moments of intimate humour flavoured with rich pathos, uniquely graceful and characteristically hilarious. That's Buster Keaton'.
The Saphead (1920)The spoiled son of a powerful Wall Street financier is arrested in a speakeasy in New York after failing to meet his childhood friend from a train. When Agnes discovers that Buster loves her she tells his father they are to marry. His father is not impressed and gives Buster a million dollars to make something of his life before he can marry Agnes.
The High Sign (1921)
Buster sees an advert in the newspaper, "Wanted by shooting gallery, must be expert shot ask for Tiny Tim". Soon he is mixed up with a bad bunch of blood-thirsty bandits. The Blinking Buzzards. Stumbling from assassin to bodyguard the tale climaxes in a booby-trapped museum.
One Week (1922)
Buster leaves church with his new wife, stopping to pick up a pair of shoes thrown for good luck. Watching closely is the evil Handy Hank, the fella his wife turned down. After receiving a house as a wedding present from their uncle, (albeit a self to build mobile home), our happy couple attempt to build and furnish with hilarious results.- Actors:
- Edward Jobson, Beulah Booker, Edward Connelly, Edward Alexander, Irving Cummings, Odette Taylor, Carol Holloway, Jack Livingston, William H. Crane, Buster Keaton, Katherine Albert, Henry Clauss, Alfred Hollingsworth, Helen Holte, Jeffrey Williams, Bartine Burkett, Charles Dorety, Ingram B. Pickett, Al St. John, Sybil Seely
- Directors:
- Herbert Blach, Windell Smith, Buster Keaton, Edward F. Cline
- Producers:
- John Golden, Marcus Loew, Winchell Smith, Joseph M. Schenck
- Writers:
- Bronson Howard, Victor Mapes, June Mathis, Winchell Smith, Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton
- Studio:
- Starlight
- Genres:
- Classics, Comedy, Romance
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Reviews (1) of Buster Keaton: The Saphead / The High Sign / One Week
Mr. O'Reilly's Ancestor - Buster Keaton: The Saphead / The High Sign / One Week review by CH
Anybody who has wielded an allen key and unfolded the innumerable pages of an ikea assembly-instruction leaflet will feel that this was a tranquil experience compared with all that Buster Keaton and his bride (Sybil Seely) endure in the matchless One Week (1919).
Astonishing to reflect that this was made over a century ago. Its stunts bring far more gasps than anything that computerised imagery can do. On the (often-terrified) face of it, the plot is simple. The couple have been given a house as a wedding present. Which sounds very generous. In fact, it is a self-assembly item, sabotaged by a rival in love who mis-numbers the many boxes; the puzzles of its construction bring many more - and all in some twenty-five minutes.
To reveal too much would spoilt it. Sufficient to say that there is a storm as virulent as the one in The Wind. And one reflects that a “sight gag” should be as subtly done as a verbal one. Just as a joke in Wilde or Orton should not be protracted as the real laugh comes with the follow-up line, so each calamity here gains its full effect by a shot a few seconds later (a classic example in the final moments). The actors take it seriously; that is the point of true comedy. As James Agee was to say of Keaton, thirty years after One Week: “he used this great, sad, motionless face to suggest various related things: a one-track mind near the track's end of pure insanity, mulish imperturbability under the wildest of circumstances; how dead a human being can get and still be alive; an awe-inspiring sort of patience and power to endure, proper to granite but uncanny in flesh and blood”.
In light of that, one should not be surprised that, some fifteen years later, the author of Keaton's final film was none other than Samuel Beckett. And, indeed, is One Week the first instance of post-modernism? For reasons not to be revealed here, the bride is discovered in her bath; the shot reveals more than would be allowed a decade later, but, as she leans out to retrieve a towel, a hand drops in front of the camera: a gag which brings a whoop of laughter in a cinema if one is fortunate enough to see this there.
Otherwise, enjoy it at home - what's more, ask a few friends round to share a great time.
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