Our Hospitality/Sherlock, Jr. | Kitty Bradbury, Ralph Bushman

Our Hospitality/Sherlock, Jr. | Kitty Bradbury, Ralph Bushman | Two of Keaton's best feature films

DVDs:

Our Hospitality/Sh...

	Our Hospitality/Sherlock, Jr. Kitty Bradbury, Ralph Bushman Kino Video, 1999 average customer review:based on 35 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The art of Buster Keaton is on spectacular display in two of his finest films. The wonderful film "Our Hospitality" (1923, 75 min.) is in many ways a companion piece to Keaton's 1926 masterpiece "The General." It stars Buster as a New York man who returns to his southern homeland only to find himself embroiled in a longstanding feud between his family and that of the woman he loves. Perhaps no other film offers as exciting a rollercoaster ride as "Sherlock, Jr." (1924, 44 min.). Dramatizing the uproarious exploits of a meek theater projectionist turned amateur sleuth, the film blends the knockabout physical comedy normally associated with slapstick with more subtly crafted moments of humor.

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Sherlock Jr.

Keaton pioneered the frenetic, fast-paced brand of physical comedy that Woody Allen, among others, later improvised upon, and turned it into a crazed art form. "Hospitality," for instance, is an inspired goof on genteel Southern honor. But "Sherlock Jr." goes one step further, utilizing a vast array of witty, brilliant visual tricks--including a dream image of Keaton leaving his body, a torrent of abrupt scene changes, and a railroad-track gag that literally broke the actor-director's neck. Keaton is at his most imaginative in "Our Hospitality" and "Sherlock Jr.," hilarious adventures that will leave you, like the nutty star himself, in stitches.

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Two of Keaton's best feature films

These two films were made sequentially - "Our Hospitality" in late 1923, and "Sherlock Jr." in early 1924.

"Our Hospitality" was Keaton's second feature film after he went from making two-reel (20 minute) short films to feature films in 1923. It is a comic take-off on the Hatfield and McCoy feud of the 1880's, but here Keaton takes you back to 1830, primarily so he can introduce the main mechanical gag of the film, - a mechanically-accurate faithful re-creation of the early locomotive - Stephenson's Rocket. The train moves so slowly that Keaton's dog runs alongside the train and has no trouble keeping up. The jist of the story is that Keaton plays Willie McKay, the surviving McKay after the McKay/Canfield feud of roughly twenty years before. Willie travels to his ancestral home in Appalachia to inspect some property he's inherited, and on the journey there begins to fall for the young lady with whom he is traveling. She turns out to be a Canfield, and when her brothers find out that a McKay is in town they go for their guns. However, the patriarch of the family (Big Joe Roberts) warns his sons that it is against their code of hospitality to shoot someone inside of their house. Willie, who has been invited to dinner, learns of all of this and does his best to not leave the house.

The other feature, Sherlock Jr., is only 45 minutes long. It actually failed when it was released, but today it is considered ground-breaking. Keaton performs some stunts such as appearing to jump through a woman backed up against a fence that remained a secret for years. He also, at the beginning of the film, jumps into a motion picture that is running in the theatre where he works as a projectionist. Once on the movie screen, Keaton has to adjust his strategy as the scene changes from the front steps of a house, to the edge of a cliff, to a lion's den.

The presence of interesting film tricks doesn't mean the absence of a plot though. The film is about a boy (Keaton) who dreams of being a great detective. The girl he pursues is also sought after by a dishonest employee of her father's who frames Keaton's character for a theft. As a result he is ordered to never to return to the girl's home again. The boy goes back to his job as a projectionist, falls asleep, and dreams of being a great detective - Sherlock Jr.

If you're unfamiliar with Keaton's work, this is a good place to start. These DVDs were released when DVD technology was relatively new, so the pictures are not as crisp as perhaps they could be. However, the video quality is still quite good. My main complaint would be that Kino didn't put any kind of extras or commentary on this disc.

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Must see movies

Our Hospitality has a great story, and never ceases to be either exciting or funny, and often both at the same time. The music for this movie is *excellent*. Very tasteful and not distracting at all from the masterpiece on screen. Our Hospitality is a wonderful film that everyone should see.

Sherlock Jr overall is not quite as good, though it has some amazing gags and stunts. As well, I found the music for Sherlock Jr to be distracting, because it used electric guitars and even stole a James Bond theme which was not to be written until the 1960's. There's even a segment which mimics present-day minimalistic composer Phillip Glass. This anachronistic stylistic mishmash didn't work for me at all. I'm usually not a purist like this, but I think that silent film scores shouldn't make use of recognizable musical material which came to exist after the film was produced. I want an old silent movie to take me back in time. Such can be done excellently with new music written in the old style, as seems to have been done with "Our Hospitality".

Still, I highly recommend this DVD because Keaton's comic and action work communicates brilliantly across generations and eras. Timeless films.

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Keaton's finest moment?

Sherlock, Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)

If you gather fifty critics and ask them all what Buster Keaton's greatest achievement was, most of them would likely answer The General. A select few, however, might choose Sherlock, Jr.; I'm one of them. I liked The General, but I loved Sherlock, Jr.

Keaton plays a janitor at a movie theater who's studying to be a detective. Both he and the town cad (Ward Crane) are romancing the town beauty (Kathryn McGuire). The cad steals a watch and pawns it in order to get the beauty a gift, then pins the crime on Keaton. Crushed and unjustly cast out, Keaton goes back to his job, falls asleep, and dreams himself in a crime film, where he becomes Sherlock, Jr., the world's greatest detective.

This short (44 min.) piece is a constant stream of stunts and sight gags, with Keaton and his usual team of writers throwing the plot away at the drop of a hat for a gag. (Just after Keaton enters the film, there's a spectacular series of scene changes that's been imitated and lampooned any number of times.) The jokes themselves are spectacular, and the movie, with its rather straightforward plot, doesn't suffer at all from getting sidetracked now and then. A wonderful, wonderful piece of work. **** ½

* * *

Our Hospitality (Buster Keaton, 1923)

Discovering Buster Keaton's work after eighty years is a treat. Our Hospitality is a wonderful piece of work, the kind of thing I've always wanted in comedy, but during my youth was passed over by television stations in favor of the Three Stooges and the Little Rascals. Well, at least I have a chance to see them now, and I couldn't be happier.

Based on the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys, Our Hosopitality casts Keaton as Willie McKay, who's been raised in the North and is only told about the generations-long feud when he's on his way to the old family homestead after the death of his father. On the train down, he meets and becomes fond of a woman (Natalie Talmadge, Keaton's real-life wife, in her final screen appearance) who turns out to be Virginia Canfield, from the rival Canfield clan. Virginia invites Willie over to dinner. The family patriarch, Joseph (Joe Roberts, also in his final screen role; he suffered a stroke during the filing of the movie, and died shortly thereafter), insists to his sons that they can't kill Willie while he's a guest in their house, but the men of the family plot to get rid of him as soon as he steps outside. Thus begins an extended and wonderful sequence of Willie trying to figure out how to get outside and back in without anyone in the family save Virginia knowing he's doing it.

This is funny stuff, much more so than the things I had to content myself with during my younger years. Keaton was a gifted comedic talent, and those around him play excellent straight men. A fantastic piece of work all around. **** ½

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And from here what?

I saw "Sherlock Jr." some years ago when I was in film school, and it stayed with me ever since. I was curious about the "Other" feature in the DVD they played to us. So here I am, watching "Our Hospitality". The marvelous gags are something that you expect from Keaton, and also some spectacular slapstick. What took me by surprise was the incredibly dangerous stunts near the end of the film. Talk about a cliffhanger! If you are somebody that only likes summer popcorn movies from the 2000s, you still owe to yourself to watch the climax of "Our Hospitality". You will be not disappointed. (Think about Tom Cruise at the end of "Mission Impossible", but done in 1923, and probably better).

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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