by Allan Fish
(USA 1922 20m) DVD1/2
Secret Policeman’s First Ball
p Joseph M.Schenck d/w Buster Keaton, Eddie Cline ph Elgin Lessley
Buster Keaton, Virginia Fox, Eddie Cline,
How many people today have really seen any Buster Keaton films? Of course many have seen the house gag from Steamboat Bill Jnr and the train sequence in The General, but who has actually seen the films in question? Hopefully, since the advent of DVD and the superb Keaton box-sets in the States, France and eventually the UK, that will be rectified, but his shorts are another matter. As with Chaplin, though the shorts are available, they are unjustly overlooked. Critics may rave about them, but rave about them to each other, rarely actually converting anyone to them. So how can I hope to convert anyone to Keaton’s shorts? The first thing is to make sure I pick the right one and, in this reviewer’s opinion, there are three all-time great Keaton shorts, all of them from the annus mirabilis that was 1922; The Electric House, The Paleface and, my favourite, Cops. It certainly isn’t that I like Cops any the more, but that it rather has a truly Keatonian narrative style. The Electric House is a joyously hilarious piece of pratfall farce exquisitely rehearsed and The Paleface a wonderful tale of Buster’s running into some Indians. Yet Cops is definitive Buster in that, like his greatest feature The General, it’s an escalation of gags. Keaton’s most typical works are like cinematic Rossini overtures, building to crescendo upon crescendo with each gag topping the previous one and the pace quickening by the minute. That much is certainly true of Cops.
It begins with a simple ultimatum delivered by a girl to her prospective suitor, our very own Buster; “I won’t marry you until you can prove to me that you can be a successful businessman.” Leaving Buster weeping at the iron gates of her abode, he sets off to prove her wrong. After a chain of events that leads to him obtaining another man’s money, he buys some furniture from a con-man who knows it isn’t for sale and belongs to someone else. Then he buys a carthorse which isn’t for sale (and makes the Steptoes’ Hercules seem like a Breeders Cup winner in comparison) to cart the furniture which isn’t his and sets off to make some money to impress his intended. However, things escalate, he interrupts a police parade, and half the city police force chase him across the city.
Many of the gags can be seen coming with the benefit of hindsight but you find yourself laughing in spite of this at the cleverness of the concept and the context of when it was made. Unlike Chaplin, Keaton doesn’t plead for audience acceptance or use pathos, he just sets out to make people laugh. So scenes are continually fastened safely in the strong box of memory, from the cops knocking each other out with their truncheons to the horse being taken to receive goat glands, from the lighting the cigarette with a bomb and being mistaken for an anarchist to the see-saw sequence with Buster as the pivot. It’s the timing of these gags that is so impressive, not just the physical timing and rehearsal but in the uncanny knowledge of just how long to build up each gag and how to keep control on a succession of gags so that the audience doesn’t miss any.
The film begins with a quote about love from Harry Houdini, and though the quote might seem misleading, both it and the nod to Houdini aren’t. On numerous occasions Keaton’s escapes from the police are ingenious enough to make Houdini proud and in the finale the quote finally gets a payback. After being chased all over town and back again by the police force (“hire more police to protect the police we’ve got” says the mayor amid the carnage), Buster manages to lock them away inside their own building while he, disguised in a policeman’s uniform, tosses the keys in a nearby ashcan. However, when he sees his girl and she is still unimpressed by him and flounces off he turns away disconsolately and realises he’s had enough. He turns back to the ashcan, gets out the keys, turns back to the door, opens it and lets the angry police mob drag him inside. It’s a typically sublime finale to Keaton’s masterpiece. The next time it turns up on Channel 4 (as it is wont to do), record it.
How Cops made the Top 100:
Peter M. No. 13
Sam Juliano No. 28
Allan Fish No. 37
Samuel Wilson No. 38
Bill Riley No. 39
Jamie Uhler No. 42
Frank Gallo No. 43
Frank Aida No. 50
From memory I think its a toss up between ‘Electric House’ and ‘Cops’, Al, although I seem to recall favouring the former.
But maybe thats a good excuse to dig out my long-neglected ‘Masters of Cinema’ Keaton shorts box-set to give a more definitive assessment.
What astonished me viewing the shorts as they were broadcast on Channel Four was not only the comic brilliance, but Keaton’s technical mastery, even innovation.
I also prefer ‘Sherlock Junior’ to ‘The General’, but thats for another day
Nothing wrong with preferring Sherlock, Jim, and with the shorts it’s down to favouritism. There are at least half a dozen classics.
Unlike Chaplin, Keaton doesn’t plead for audience acceptance or use pathos, he just sets out to make people laugh. So scenes are continually fastened safely in the strong box of memory, from the cops knocking each other out with their truncheons to the horse being taken to receive goat glands, from the lighting the cigarette with a bomb and being mistaken for an anarchist to the see-saw sequence with Buster as the pivot.
I was myself scheduled to do this piece, but had to forfeit it after the hectic opening of school made the writing of it impossible. Needless to say Allan’s review of it is excellent, and he’s for a very long time rightly hailed this Kafka-esque masterwork as the iconic stoneface’s greatest short. The gag locking up the police is among Keaton’s greatest set pieces, and there isn’t a wasted moment throughout in the brilliantly-constructed film. Of course we have a wonderful Kino blu-ray of the short now, and it’s part of that exceptional MoC box set.
One of the greatest shorts of all-time by anybody, and a fantasic consideration of it!
Sam, I was also set to highlight that passage (so I’ll just leave my comment here) as I agree with the gist of it (Keaton was the ultimate showman, and in turn the first real action star), but I do think that Keaton, in his own very different way, showed just as much pathos as Chaplin ever did. The fact that Keaton’s was so nonchalant and almost hidden I’ve also thought it to be a bit deeper than Chaplin’s, more philosophical. Chaplin’s, and this is why it worked so well in pictures, was temporally motivated generally so we could always readily identify where it had come from as we’d seen the events that had born it out. Keaton, on the other hand, has it in frame 1, has it always and forever, off-screen and on.
I won’t speak much on his considerable physical abilities born from being a gymnast, as that is akin to me describing the blue of the sky. Just looking out the window and seeing it is better prose just as watching Keaton move and tumble, swing and sway is better than anything I, or anyone else, can expound.
As for this short, yes it made my list, yes I’m a Keaton fanatic (5 of his films placed in Top 60, and a 6th—The Paleface almost made it too), yes it is brilliant, and yes Allan frames it wonderfully here.
Jamie, that’s an interesting comment on pathos given how critics have used Keaton’s purported lack of it as a point in his favor against Chaplin. But I think you’re right about Keaton. His pathos may have been more understated because it was more universal in scope. While both he and Chaplin played misfits of a sort, there’s sometimes a special pleading in Chaplin (your “temporal motivation,” perhaps) for a self-conscious beautiful soul, while Keaton would never make such a claim for himself and arguably sent up that whole approach in Go West. Ending one short and one feature with gravestones is an exercise in a kind of pathos, compared with the other (pathos-free) comic option of showing himself suddenly transformed into an angel, which Keaton saved for a dream (or near-death) sequence in The Haunted House. In any event, the Tramp doesn’t die in his pictures, while Keaton can envision Buster’s demise and find both humor (or else why do it?) and his particular pathos in the idea.
Yes, yes! I also think if you read the two correctly as outlined by Andrew Sarris in his The American Cinema that Chaplin was the mystic, Keaton the realist and how they approached everything from love/girl, comedy, situation, social economic hierarchy, etc. bears this reading out. Keaton, since he sees the world so realistically and sets what he likes and or adores on realistic footing with himself rather than above him unrealistically as Chaplin does, helps his pathos immensely.
I also see it in their separate physicality, stunts happen around Chaplin with the laughs being how he inexplicably was untouched, while Buster often bears the brunt with his physicality being that of being able to withstand the brunt force of collision. It’s the difference of floating above the wreckage (philosophically and physically) or being smack dab in it and all that that implies both ways.
in short, I found this the other day and can’t imagine how anyone can see this and deny Keaton’s pathos:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/KeatonPorkpie.jpg
Oh and lastly, bare in mind I consider both men supreme brilliance incarnate.
I second that motion!
Good point Jamie. I definitely see Pathos in Keaton and of course in Chaplin. Keaton’s is deadpan pathos though, while Chaplin’s is more traditionally emotive pathos.
If there is one oversight that I could rectify it would be putting this short on my list of 60. I had held myself to keeping the list of films by any one director/comedy troupe to 3 in the top 60, otherwise this would have been on mine. This film is hilarious and absolute brilliance. I watched this a few months ago with my two small children aged 2 and 4. I was surprised with how attentive they were to this short and how much they laughed! It made me laugh all the harder knowing that they thought it was funny. Made me realize how physical comedy is so universal. They didn’t need any interpretation really for what was funny. Our favorite sequence in the film was when Buster has the ladder perched on the fence and he goes back and forth across the thing and people start hanging on to it and it turns into some grandiose teeter-totter. Such an amazing gag in an amazing film. I think the whole short is on Youtube.
Jon, great comment! I smiled when I read your two girls loved it so much! That says it all.
There’s another Keaton short that I like too. Playhouse. The one where Keaton plays nearly everyone in the film. It has a few lags but is still amazing and I’m not quite sure how he managed to pull that off.
Great post, Sam! I admit to being familiar with Keaton’s full-length features, but don’t recall if I’ve seen any of his short films. More good stuff to discover!
Pat, thanks here in behalf of Allan, who rescued me when I just couldn’t get a review of this written in time.
Oops! Apologies and congratulations to Allan! I came stratight here after reveiwing the email with the countdown assignments, so didn’t even check to make sure Sam was stil lthe author.
A wonderful post Allan. It is difficult to pick one Keaton short out of so many great ones. COPS is a favortite as is THE PLAYHOUSE, THE PALEFACE and others.
It compares with all the great Keaton features, and at the very least it’s one of the best of the shorts. As usual Mr. Fish covers it all with a minimum of words. In the best sense, I say he would have made it big with Cliff’s or Monarch notes!
It’s between this film and ‘The Playhouse’ for Keaton’s greatest short. But really with him there a several that are in uniform in excellence. What sticks with me most aside from the chase in the comic’s oft-bleak sense of humor, seen most resoundingly in that final gravestone shot. ‘Cops’ shows the icon’s athleticism in full throttle. Very fine review Allan.
Thanks all for the nice comments, but as Sam said it was merely a fill in. The piece had already featured in my silent 100 back before the flood. Let’s hope there’s no more need for last minute fill-ins.
This so-called “fill in” would be tough to beat even with planning ahead. As ever your art of economy is unsurpassed.
I meant fill in as a stopgap, that’s all. And ironically, this was the first Keaton Short piece I did. I’ve done pieces on One Week, Neighbours, The Paleface and The Electric House since and they’re probably all better than this one, as one might expect. I’m probably a more adequate writer now.
Incorrigible!
No, just the more of these you do, the better you get at it. It becomes second nature.
If you read many of this pieces, and I have as many around here have as well, you can roundabout tell when some are written OR when your passion for a film is red hot or just a mere lukewarm ember. You’ve done almost 2,000 of these damn things and I do think the more you do the greater you do get. This is a natural thing, practice makes perfect, so Allan, you son of a bitch, don’t use this as a means to demean yourself! LOL.
Nice work, regardless of when this are written, it’s a good read.
Lukewarm ember? Nice. That’d be The Wizard of Oz, I can’t deny its brilliance, but it’s hard to be passionate about such a conservative piece of claptrap.
And being my usual pedantic, self., it’s 1,843 of these bleedin’ pieces.
One Keaton short ranked higher on my poll and whether we see it later will decide whether others agree, but that shouldn’t take anything from Cops as perhaps the archetypal silent comedy short. Having all the cops in it definitely helps the film play that role. They’re an essential element in the generic silent comedy anyone is likely to carry in their head. They have an authentic beef with Buster here but their enmity toward clowns was a constant for generations, regardless of causes — until we didn’t really see it anymore. It’s definitely nowhere near as common a motif as it used to be, which may reflect some indoctrination but also reflects a recognition that today’s policeman isn’t necessarily some moron who walks a beat only because he knows someone who knows someone. Still, something seems missing when we don’t see the cop chasing the clown as often as we used to.
Maybe because cops usurped the roles of clowns? Hard to chase yourself.
Love that punchline, Jamie!
Samuel Wilson’s silent clown scholarship and expertise is unsurpassed.
Thanks cheerleader. lol.
I’ll cheerlead for you too in this department! lol.
Well, I have to agree with Allan on his take here.
We all know, mainly, the feature work of Keaton. However, it’s really, decidely, a good footing in the shorts that gives a viewer a 101 course on the budding maturity of Keaton as a comic director of maturity and great invention.
Yes, I do “prefer” pictures like OUR HOSPITALITY and THE GENERAL more, but I think that has to do more with the scope of the stories he’s bringing to life in the long form and the time he has to labor on key sequences and device. The shorts are the real fire when you think of the economy and the short amount of time that he (like Chaplin with his short work) were given to come up with the desired effect.
The best way I can describe a short film like COPS is breathless.
Excellent piece on this. I prefer ‘The Playhouse’ and ‘One’ Week’ – but there are many others of distinction too.