Several New Chances to See Keaton Comedy

By Christopher P. Jacobs
Movies Editor

Buster Keaton fans have much to rejoice about this month. Next Monday, July 26, this year’s MSUM Summer Cinema series concludes with Keaton’s classic “Seven Chances” (1925). Earlier this month Kino Video released Keaton’s last independent masterpiece, “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” (1928) to BluRay, and a double-disc DVD set called “Lost Keaton,” consisting of 16 rare Keaton comedy shorts from the sound era.

“Seven Chances” is a good example of Keaton from his prime creative period, when he would take a very simple premise and construct a series of increasingly elaborate sight-gags and stunts building to an amusingly amazing climax. In this case his character learns he will inherit seven million dollars, but only if he is married by 7 pm that very day! First he tries to find a bride, and as women learn of the conditions, they start to pursue him instead, leading to a chase down a hillside strewn with loose boulders.

The hillside chase was later copied by George Lucas in one of the “Star Wars” movies (with the Jar-Jar Binks character). The entire film was remade in 1999 with Chris O’Donnell under the title “The Bachelor,” but could not even approach the original Keaton version. “Seven Chances” is scheduled for 7:30 pm Monday in MSUM’s Weld Hall, showing on 16mm film with a live Wurlitzer pipe organ accompaniment.

“Steamboat Bill, Jr.” came out just as Hollywood was converting to sound, so the silent comedy was overshadowed at the time by the new “talkie” technology and was not a financial success. Now, however, it stands as one of the very best Keaton features, blending a multi-layered story and well-developed major characters with brilliantly incorporated gags (several imaginatively re-worked from previous films) and a spectacular climax during a hurricane (decades before CGI effects).

In this film, Keaton’s character is a nerdy Boston college kid moving back to a small southern town to meet his estranged riverboat-captain father for the first time since he was a baby. Of course he’s nothing like what his father expected, and the family tension is compounded by the fact that a wealthy rival is trying to run him out of business, and that Keaton’s college girlfriend happens to be the daughter of that rival.

While not quite as visually impressive as Kino’s incredibly sharp BluRay of Keaton’s “The General” (whose source had been printed directly from the original camera negative), this new BluRay has very fine high-def transfers from good 35mm copies (a dupe negative and a fine-grain positive) of two completely different versions of “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” The one that has been available for years on DVD and VHS is included as a “special feature” with a wonderful vintage piano score by William Perry.

The default version is taken from film found in the Keaton Estate archives, which is not only a slightly sharper print, but is made up entirely of alternate takes and slightly different camera angles. This version has a newly-recorded small orchestra score in 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio (with a 2.0 option), plus a classic theatre pipe organ score in mono, played by veteran theatre organist Lee Erwin.

There are several bonus features besides the alternate cut of the film and alternate music scores, but alas no audio commentary. There’s a brief documentary on the film’s production and the two alternate versions, a good stills gallery, a very short montage of Keaton stunts, and two different early recordings of the song “Steamboat Bill,” which inspired the screenplay.

“STEAMBOAT BILL, JR.” on BluRay – Movie: A+ / Video: A (default version), A- (alternate version) / Audio: A+, A- / Extras: B

After Keaton made “Steamboat Bill, Jr.,” he gave up his own studio and signed with MGM, where he starred in two more good silent comedy features, but then was put into sound films as more of a supporting player with little or no control over the stories and gags. They were reasonably successful at the box office, but Keaton was not happy and the films do not hold up nearly as well as those from his silent screen career.
In 1934 he joined a small company called “Educational” that specialized in comedy shorts. There Keaton made 16 two-reelers (approximately 20 minutes each) over the next three years, and all are included on Kino’s two-DVD set, “Lost Keaton.” Keaton’s very first films, nearly two decades earlier, had been short comedies until he’d switched to making only feature-length movies in 1923.
These shorts do not quite maintain the freshness and ingenuity of his silent comedies, but he obviously is enjoying the chance to return to what he did best, now with the added medium of sound. Many shorts rework elements and gags from his best silent work, and he tries some new variations on the “Elmer” character he’d played in his MGM sound features.

Keaton’s series of Educational Pictures from 1934-37 is certainly worth seeing, and Kino’s new set is obviously a must for Keaton completists, who should already have Sony’s double-disc DVD set of 10 Columbia talkie shorts from 1939-41, which came out four years ago.

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If You Go

What: “Seven Chances”
Where: Weld Hall, MSUM
When: Mon, July 26, 7:30pm
Info: 701.237.0477