 | Fatty Arbuckle, Buster Keaton, and Al St. John in "Out West."
[click photo for larger version] |
According to Keaton, by their third comedy, he become Arbuckle's sole writing staff. We'll never know how much truth there is in Keaton's claim, but many jokes are unmistakably Keatonesque. They set patterns than Keaton would frequently repeat in his solo career. For example, "The Rough House" begins with a wonderful sequence where Arbuckle awakes and finds his bed on fire. He calmly rises and patters to the kitchen for a teacup of water, returns and dumps the water on the bed, and deadpans as the water has little effect. He repeats this cycle with the same results. It's a strange sequence for Arbuckle, who usually preferred a more frenzied approach. But it's easy to imagine Keaton playing this scene. In spite of quiet scenes like this one, the Arbuckle/Keaton shorts are typically filled with brawling action. That's the Arbuckle influence. He set the tone and pace while Keaton devised many of the individual jokes. Occasionally, however, Arbuckle's style overwhelmed Keaton's on-screen demeanor, as in "Coney Island," where Buster completely sets aside his more subdued acting style in favor of mugging like Al St. John. Most of the Arbuckle/Keaton shorts feature at least one moment where "the Great Stoneface" laughs (or, as in "Coney Island," cries).
In general, the best Arbuckle/Keaton shorts come from their second and third years together. During their first year, the pacing of their comedies was so fast and furious that the results flirt with total chaos. "The Bell Boy" is one of their best comedies--and not coincidentally it's also the first short where Arbuckle and Keaton worked as a team in front of the camera. Previously, Arbuckle was the star and Keaton played only a supporting role. "The Bell Boy" is filled with Keaton gags--as when Keaton cleans a stubborn spot on a pane of glass: not until he pokes his head through the non-existent pane is the ruse revealed.
The very best Arbuckle/Keaton short is likely their last--"The Garage." Here, they operate a small garage/fire station, where they wreak havoc on the automobiles left in their care. Keaton splatters a car with grease, but thanks to a marvelous revolving platform upon which he places the car, Arbuckle is able to clean off the grease in only a matter of seconds. But the short's most inventive bit of comedy comes courtesy of an aggressive dog that rips off Buster's pants. Seeing the pantsless Keaton, a woman reacts in horror and runs for a policeman. Thinking quickly, Buster cuts a kilt out of a billboard advertisement for a Scottish performer, and then he wears the paper kilt. The ruse works until he turns around, exposing his underwear-only clad backside.
 | Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton in "The Garage."
[click photo for larger version] |
After making 14 shorts together over three years, Keaton had assumed much of the creative control. Not surprisingly, Arbuckle soon decided the time was ripe for a move to feature films. With Arbuckle gone, producer Schenck offered Keaton the opportunity to make his own comedies, and soon Keaton began making some of the most wildly inventive comedies in the history of cinema. Meanwhile, Arbuckle moved on to generic roles in Paramount features that under-utilized his unique talents. Unfortunately, today, Arbuckle's name is forever linked to a horrible incident where a woman died at a Hollywood party. Arbuckle was eventually cleared of any charges, but the stigma of blame remained. As a result, he found himself blacklisted in Hollywood. At the age of 34, his career was over.
Kino On Video has packaged ten of the Arbuckle/Keaton comedies on two separate DVDs. These shorts have been digitally mastered from 35mm archive materials (except for "Moonshine," which was mastered from 16mm). Most of the prints show some signs of deterioration and wear, but the imperfections don't take away from the comedy. These are wonderfully engaging comedies.
Purists might wince at the soundtracks, which feature The Alloy Orchestra performing scores composed for these DVDs. For the most part, I like the scores, especially in their softer passages, such as the gentle Western-tinged tones of "Out West." But I have to admit that as the action on the screen gets more frenzied, the clanks and bangs on the soundtrack become wearisome. I had to turn down the volume to a whisper (or risk a migraine). Kino might have followed the example of Image Entertainment's The Lost World DVD (which also features a score by The Alloy Orchestra) and provided an alternate soundtrack featuring a traditional organ score. But otherwise, these are wonderful DVDs.
