by Allan Fish
(USA 1923 70m) DVD1/2
Love thy neighbour as thyself
p Joseph M.Schenck d Buster Keaton, Jack G.Blystone w Jean Haver, Joseph Mitchell, Clyde Bruckman ph Elgin Lessley, Gordon Jennings
Buster Keaton (Willie McKay, aged 21), Natalie Talmadge (Virginia Calmadge), Joe Keaton (Lem Doolittle), Buster Keaton Jnr (Willie McKay, aged 1), Kitty Bradbury (aunt Mary), Joe Roberts (Joseph Canfield), Monte Collins (parson), James Duffy (Sam Gardner), Ralph Bushman (Clayton Canfield),
Our Hospitality is Buster Keaton’s homage of homages to life in the old South. It is also, assumedly quite by chance, the nearest he came to the death-defying world of Harold Lloyd. Yet Keaton in some ways tops Lloyd, his stunts not only being daring, but reliant on absolutely exquisite timing. In truth, The General and Sherlock Junior are more recognised as Keaton masterpieces. Even Leslie Halliwell said that Hospitality is more charming than hilarious, but it’s no worse for that. It’s still a damned fine film.
The story is a variation on the legendary McKoy and Hatfield feud of nineteenth century repute, beginning in 1810 with John McKay celebrating the first anniversary of the birth of his only son. Also on his mind is the continuing feud with the local neighbours, the landowning Canfields. When he is killed, his infant son is sent to live with his aunt far away but, come his 21st birthday, he is summoned back by executors of his father’s estate to reclaim what is his. He dreams of large cotton plantations out of Gone With the Wind and sets off by train to the town of Rockville. Once there he again runs foul of the Canfields, but unwittingly falls for their daughter, with whom he had travelled on the journey. Once he gets to his estate, he sees that the reality is somewhat less salubrious than he had imagined (think of Bill Fields’ orange grove shack in It’s a Gift and you’ll get the idea).
When watching Lloyd’s films one always realises we’re going to be presented with an old fashioned romance as an excuse to string together a series of set-pieces. With Keaton, though the same is true, there’s a far richer tapestry of images to feast on, not to mention historical detail. Yet still it’s the set-pieces that stick in the memory banks; that amazing opening train ride, which due to taking place in 1830 (just a year after the Rainhill Trials, don’t forget), is somewhat primitive, with tracks being moved around stationery donkeys as if made out of plasticine, other tracks lain over rocks, logs, bumps and any other immovable object (one almost expects to see them lain over someone sleeping it off). Then there’s another piece of magical timing where Buster evades the gun-toting Canfield sons by fishing by a pond, only for workers to blast a dam, thus causing the water to start to overflow the reservoir above him, making him think it’s raining and put his brolly up. Then, the flow suddenly flows over like waterfall, completely covering Buster but thus hiding him from the passing Canfields. In any other film for any other comedian, this would be the highpoint, but for Buster it’s just a rehearsal for the real thing. Later on, Keaton has to get himself tied to one of his pursuers to escape from a rock-face, but in escaping cannot remove the rope from his waist. When he takes over a train, which then crashes into a raging river, he finds himself encumbered by the still attached rope. He manages to hang on to a log, only for he, still tied, and the log, to all but go over the waterfall earlier created. If that is not enough, his beloved, also cast into the river after her boat overturns, is coming towards him. I won’t spoil it for you, excepting to say that his rescue of her and himself is an absolute miracle of a stunt, even after all these years, even topping the collapsing house gag from Steamboat Bill Jnr. Finally, Buster gets his happy ending in the arms of Talmadge, but not as happy as the audience, who head into the darkness after yet another priceless gag, involving the surrender of firearms. And though he would later go onto equally great if not greater things, coming on the back of his magical shorts of the previous year (such as Cops), Hospitality shows Keaton, then 28, at his absolute zenith.
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My favorite gag from Our Hospitality is the one with the old man who throws rocks at the train with an ulterior motive. It’s a brilliant bit that has nothing to do with Buster himself and testifies to a comic genius that transcended his own persona. This will be much higher on my own list, but again, I’ll work from a more limited pool of films.
“It’s a damn fine film”
No arguement from me, one of Keaton’s finest.
Keaton definitely has the most dynamic film aesthetic of the silent clowns and is by some lights most “cinematic” – this film is a fine example of that, at times its sense of historical evocation is as powerful as anything from Griffith or Ford.
For me, Our Hospitality is the most sheerly enjoyable of all Keaton’s films. The gags may not all be laugh-out-loud hilarious, but they build: like the extended sequence where Keaton’s hosts want to murder him but, according to their antebellum code, have to be gracious and courtly (and not murder him) while he’s under their roof.
Keaton’s imperviousness to physical pain in his demanding stunts always astonished me, until I learned that as a child he was basically a human beanbag in his father’s vaudeville act–thrown around and dumped for humorous effect.
The train sequence alone is worth the price of admission – Fellini kept coming to my mind. Brilliantly designed and executec.