Good Night Nurse

Fatty Arbuckle plays a wealthy lush whose wife ships him off to the asylum for a quick fix to alcoholism; Buster Keaton plays the blood-soaked doctor who steps straight out of the operating room to greet him. There's a lot of dark subject matter at play here, an odd concept for high-tempo slapstick comedy, but that's all quickly shuffled to the side in favor of a reckless pillow fight and another bout of cross-dressing. This must be the fourth time Fatty has donned a woman's wig and dress, flirting with a red-cheeked young gentleman, in the past year. Despite that one notable repetition, he and Keaton still provide a good batch of fresh, funny new material to fill out the rest of the show. It's quite scattered and the story is secondary at best, but the physical humor lands with consistency and that's really why we're here, right?

This is a typical Fatty Arbuckle vehicle, full of fast-paced slapstick. Much of the material is, typically for early silent comedy, rather unchoreographed mayhem: for example, 5 hospital staff members trying to move Arbuckle from a bed to a gurney, all 12 arms and legs jumping, flailing and falling. The faster everything moves, the better! However, there are several quite interesting moments in the film.

Firstly, at one point, Arbuckle, dressed as a nurse, flirts with Dr. Buster Keaton in a lengthy (over a minute) sequence; standing on opposite sides of a hallway, they make goo-goo eyes at each other, shyly fingering their own lips with their index fingers, and tracing sweet nothings in extreme embarrassment upon the walls near which they stand, respectively. It is interesting to see Keaton play a man smitten; his famous stone-face character of later solo films famously saw women only as necessary nuisances. More shockingly, at the end of the flirting scene, as Keaton and Arbuckle playfully push each other around, Keaton actually laughs - something we will never see him do on his own.

The funniest part of the movie is when the nearby town holds its annual "Fat Man Race". Within a minute, all the runners have fallen to the side of the road, exhausted - very funny. As can be expected, Arbuckle will accidentally fall into the race. At one point, a man paints the number "5" on a telephone pole. As expected, Arbuckle leans against the pole, and when he moves away, we see the number 5 on his back; now he really seems to be a part of the race. Bizarrely, the "5" does not appear on his back in reverse, as it should; the imprint from the pole has miraculously reversed itself!

Lastly, it may be noted that silent comedy had a penchant for sight gags that revolved around physical deformity and grotesqueness. At one point in this film, Arbuckle hands the end of a long hose to a local hick. The hick grins, showing off a vile looking orifice, filled with gum disease, but few teeth. Repulsive and pointless! Long live silent film comedy.

Despite some moments in heavy rain, an encounter with a drunk as well as an organ grinder with a gypsy and a monkey, and a stay in a sanitarium, this Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle silent comedy short with support from Buster Keaton and Al St. John is only fitfully amusing though there is a quite funny sequence of Arbuckle in drag flirting with Buster that's the ultimate in "meet cute" scenes especially since it's one of the few times we see The Great Stone Face smile and laugh in the movies! Also, many scenes seem to have been jump cut edited possibly because of overuse of the film stock. Still, if you're an Arbuckle or Keaton completist, Good Night, Nurse! is certainly worth a look.

The sequence in the rain that opens this short is fantastic, maybe one of the best comedic portrayals of being drunk. There are so many funny bits here, including Arbuckle repeatedly trying to light a cigarette in the downpour, a woman with an umbrella (Buster Keaton!) being blown into him and then down the street horizontally by the gale, and Arbuckle trying to mail a fellow drunk (Snitz Edwards) home after writing his address on his shirt and stamping his forehead. Check out the high kick to the face Keaton gives him, one of two in the film (the other is delivered by Joe Keaton, Buster's father).

His wife (Alice Lake) has seen an advertisement that claims alcoholism can be cured by an operation at the "No Hope" Sanitarium (never mind that right below it is an article claiming sensationally "Seasickness Cured!"). At the entrance to the place, they meet a heavily bandaged man walking out on crutches (Joe Keaton) saying he is fully cured which gives Arbuckle pause, and allows for a little effect work when he throws the man his crutches and he catches them in perfect walking pose, done with reverse motion. When they get inside, we meet the doctor (Buster Keaton) who has blood all over his surgical gown, sharpening a giant knife as if he were going to carve up a holiday roast. We get a further glimpse of the wickedness of Arbuckle's humor when a "crazy" woman (also Alice Lake) runs into the room and throws herself into his arms. With his wife looking on, he realizes he can take advantage of the situation and after looking at the viewer, gives her a couple of kisses.

Much of the second half consists of trying to physically subdue Arbuckle to have the operation, or capture him when he tries to escape. Some of that is typical slapstick fare, like a pillow fight that results in a million feathers in the air, but there are lots of other enjoyable bits, starting with the camera gradually going out of focus when Arbuckle is sedated. At one point he disguises himself as a female nurse and then flirts awkwardly with Dr. Keaton, both men putting a finger in their mouth and bashfully looking away, Buster grinning sheepishly, a hilarious moment. Arbuckle shows once again that he was light on his feet, a result of having had dance lessons. Just watch him gracefully leap sideways into a pool to distance himself from the woman who during the escape now wants to go back, just as he pranced around so well in his living room early on. He finds himself in a race of the "200-Pound club" which amusingly has the other contestants keel over by the side of the road, and him dashing to victory.

It's certainly not politically correct today and interesting to note it wasn't politically correct in its day either, something that would eventually come back to unfairly haunt Arbuckle when he was put on trial in the Virginia Rappe case. Enjoy him here with his pal Buster, possibly at the height of his career.

Roscoe Arbuckle stars as a man with alcohol addiction. His wife commits him to No Hope Sanitarium where they are greeted by the doctor wearing blood covered gown (Buster Keaton) and crazy female patient (Alice Lake). The film is quite loose on plot (like Arbuckle's movies usually), but this one is one of the most incoherent ones. That doesn't mean it is not funny or enjoyable. 'Good Night, Nurse!' is not so much of slapstick stuff, but it works rather as dark comedy. Still, one over the top sequence follows the other, until all the adventures get little bit unsatisfactory conclusion.

One interesting scene is where Arbuckle dresses up as female nurse and then starts to flirt with Buster Keaton's doctor. Scenes, where Buster smiles so long, are really rare. There are brief glimpses of his smile in some other movies, but in this movie, we don't see one bit of Keaton's usual stone face - he is thoughtful or smiling throughout the film.