![]() If the 'adrift alone' theme echoes "The Navigator", then the final knock-down fight inevitably recalls "Battling Butler" as in that film, Keaton produces not only an athletic but a well-acted confrontation, as Elmer faces up to an opponent tall enough and strong enough to hold him ineffectual at arm's-length. I was struck by the difference in tone between the sympathetic comedy of this section, where he tries to reduce sail with the help of the girl and the handicap of their joint ignorance, and the earlier, clumsy, 'varnishing' sequence, in which he is purely inept and we are expected to find it funny. It occurs to me in passing to wonder if isolation of the filming crew aboard the yacht could possibly have helped foil studio interference.? But maybe it's simply that this is the Keaton we're used to, coming up with wonderfully complex schemes, disabling an entire crew of villains one by one or launching himself intrepidly into the unknown mysteries of the rigging. The real enjoyment for me, however, only started when Elmer and the girl are left alone on the yacht together it's almost as if a script that has been written to date by somebody else is taken over by an inspiration that's characteristically Keaton's, as both he and his character rise to the occasion. I have to confess that I didn't find the scene where he tries endlessly to put her to bed to be as classic as it's apparently held, although I did appreciate his typically Keatonesque solution to the chair problem, but the film definitely picks up from around this point. Miss Sebastian shines during the restaurant scene, with Buster as second fiddle, and he is able to advance his relationship with his 'wife' during this section of the film into something a little more complex than fatuous knock-kneed idolatry. Fortunately, matters improve thereafter, as he is allowed a little more resource. But what I love about Keaton isn't his ability to fall over things and knock things down - any comic worth his salt can do that - it's the ingenuity and resourceful illogic of his invention at its best, and there's precious little of that on show here. The sequence in which 'Elmer' disrupts the performance of the Civil War melodrama was, for me, more a matter of cringing than laughter it's only fair to say that these sentiments were very definitely not shared by those in the seats nearby, and it may well just be a case of my aversion to the destructive nature of slapstick humour. There are moments that fly past with Keaton's old lightness of touch, such as the revelation of the true source of his elegant clothing, but there seems to be a general feeling that if a joke is worth doing once, it is worth labouring to death. But too much of the humour I found simply to be farcical clowning: in an earlier film, the routine with the hats, for example, might have lasted a second or so for a throwaway laugh, but here it's milked far beyond what it can bear, and much of the other business I felt to be equally forced. Dorothy Sebastian gets good material and can act, and so can Keaton - when he's allowed. The opening scenes have their moments, certainly. ![]() I'm afraid it was because I didn't find it very funny. As to why, precisely, I found myself speculating so extensively during the first half of the film on the changes in Keaton's personal appearance. The alteration is not unbecoming, but it's undoubtedly somewhat marked. He has abruptly grown into those strong bones at last. ![]() In "The Cameraman" his character was still the dreamy boy - but that famous angular face has filled out into a sculpted adult mask, alabaster assuming the opaque authority of marble no longer playing a college student but a nervy man in his thirties, this is the mature Keaton who will become familiar from the publicity material of the new decade. Well, it had to happen some time in the course of a year's experience at MGM, Buster Keaton's features have finally left youth behind, and left it hard and fast.
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