Convicto 13

An early Buster Keaton short, this begins with Buster attempting to play golf and obviously not being too familiar with how to play the game. Where else but in a silent comedy can you see a golfer trying to hit the ball out of a lake while standing on a raft...and then diving in for fish to find out which fish swallowed his golf ball?! Keaton gets it on the third try and gives the fish a spanking after retrieving the ball! Insane stuff, as that's just the first five minutes!

Along comes an escaped convict (crazy things just happen out of the blue in a lot of these old silent comedies) who sees Buster lying the ground, having knocked himself out with a golf ball. The convict switches clothing and now Buster is wearing stripes. Cops notice him (HE didn't notice what he was wearing?!) and begin chasing him. Buster winds up back at the penitentiary. Since he's wearing number 13 on his jail outfit, he's scheduled to be hanged the next day. His girlfriend saves him by putting elastic gymnasium rope in place of the noose, so Buster bounces up and down after the trap door operates. Watching all of this are the other inmates who are sitting in bleachers while a vendor sells peanuts and popcorn.

It goes on from there, with a prison riot the next day and Buster and some humongous goon knocking out a bunch of uniformed guards and the other prisoners via some strange methods. It's pure disjointed chaos but it makes for a wild and fun 20-minute film.

I'd like to add to Claudio's plot synopsis that this film is total surrealism. I was so struck by its superficial resemblance to reality but the story is really taking place in a crazy imaginary world where Keaton as the golfer can grab a fish out of the river (when the ball is knocked there), shake it around and have his golf ball pop out the fish's mouth. The film has a charm all it's own - so different from what Chaplin or Harold Lloyd were doing. I wonder if the European Dadaists were looking at Keaton's early stuff. The time frame is just right. The film is available, by the way,on the Kino Steamboat Bill Jr. DVD. But in an unrestored version, alas.

I've seen better Buster Keaton short films, but this one still manages to portray the rather dreary fate of a man who finds himself in prison because an escaped convict switched clothes with him after he knocked himself unconscious with a golf ball. His is ultimately to be hung, and I think the film deserves respect for keeping you laughing even while a man gets a noose wrapped around his neck. The story involves Keaton's efforts to escape from the prison, oppressed at first by the prison guards holding him prisoner and then by a massive behemoth of a convict, who takes control of the small prison by knocking out all of the guards with a sledge hammer (in a rather entertaining sequence where he smacks them all one by one and they pile up like the police cars in Blues Brothers 2000) at right about the same time that Keaton manages to switch clothes with one of them in order to help himself escape. Lots of clever slapstick gags, some of which may have influenced Chaplin's work in Pay Day, made a couple years later, make this an entertaining short from one of the giants of silent film comedy.

A prisoner escapes from prison and steals and changes clothes of a golf player (Buster Keaton). The policemen wrongly arrest the player instead and once in prison, he realizes that he is going to be hanged in the afternoon. The player swaps clothes with a guard and fights against a rebellion in the prison.

"Convict 13" is a very naive and silly, but also funny Buster Keaton's short comedy. The gags are very similar to Charles Chaplin style, and most of the time the situation looks like a cartoon. It is not among my favorite works of Buster Keaton, but it worth watching and it is a good entertainment. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "O Condenado No 13" ("The Convict no. 13")

Like many Keaton shorts, the plot is only a vehicle for Keaton to explore his imagination and to give him an opportunity to devise clever gags. When one watches a short such as this, it is important to think of it as a cartoon. It is not meant to be Citizen Kane, but only to be visually entertaining and to keep the audience guessing as to what Buster will do next. His physical comedy is wonderful here and I can't help but think that the creators of the Warner Brothers cartoons were great Buster Keaton fans. Keaton's reaction when he realizes that a burly convict whom he had just antagonized escaped from his cell and is standing right behind him is priceless, right down to Buster's cartoonish exaggerated heartbeat. This is followed by a move that would make Jackie Chan jealous. Convict 13 succeeds brilliantly at its goal and much of the humor is timeless. If you have the proper expectations, you will really enjoy this film.