directed by: Buster Keaton
written by: Clyde Bruckman, Jean C. Havez, Joseph A. Mitchell + Roi Cooper Megrue (original play)
starring: Buster Keaton, T. Roy Barnes, Snitz Edwards, Ruth Dwyer
comment: 8th February, 2016
Oh no, what does it mean that Buster has white actors in blackface alongside real actors of colour? I didn't notice that before. But through a mild research I found out that this is a proof of state of affairs in Hollywood at the time and not of Buster's close-mindedness. He grew up amongst vaudeville performers from around the world and had no time to develop fear of anything different or foreign. Real black actors could only appear as extras and studios did not accept them as actors for speaking roles and such.
And now to the film itself: I often admire Buster's signature dramaturgy of bizzare, which reaches one hundred and ten percent in this flick. His films starts off quite realistically, actually, quite normally, just a common loser encounters a problem and by trying to deal with it he pushes the solution further and further away, if not making it entirely impossible. And then the whole fictional universe morphs into something very absurd and abstract, in this case a clever chase with a bunch of brides turns into a primordial fight for survival, where honor and flying bricks go against each other, and then it evolves in a symbolic fight between man and his destiny, here in a form of an artificial avalanche threatening to bring doom to all. The story only plays a second fiddle, Buster goes where his instinct and his body limits lead him and let him. And boy, if it isn't a fantastic ride.
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