Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Our Hospitality (1923)
Director: John G. Blystone, Buster Keaton
Well worth seeing if you can see it in the magical time traveling setting of the Paramount in Seattle with Dennis James on organ. (see The Navigator for a longer discussion of the Paramount’s Silent Movie Monday’s).
This film however did not hold up as well these 80 years as The Navigator and many other Keaton films. There are ingenious gags, such as the train sequence which takes Buster from New York to the south and the hilarious situation where Keaton tries like crazy to not the leave the house of the McKay family intent on killing him as soon as he does. (Their manners will not allow them to kill a guest.) Perhaps the problem is there is more melodrama than frantic physical comedy – Keaton’s comedy always holds up while very little melodrama translates over the decades.
Still, enjoyable.
Well worth seeing if you can see it in the magical time traveling setting of the Paramount in Seattle with Dennis James on organ. (see The Navigator for a longer discussion of the Paramount’s Silent Movie Monday’s).
This film however did not hold up as well these 80 years as The Navigator and many other Keaton films. There are ingenious gags, such as the train sequence which takes Buster from New York to the south and the hilarious situation where Keaton tries like crazy to not the leave the house of the McKay family intent on killing him as soon as he does. (Their manners will not allow them to kill a guest.) Perhaps the problem is there is more melodrama than frantic physical comedy – Keaton’s comedy always holds up while very little melodrama translates over the decades.
Still, enjoyable.
