Convict 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'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.

Convict 13 has an interesting concept; here, our Buster is totally hell- bent on getting his ball to its hole and literally fishes out the golf ball from a fish's little mouth when his ball drops into the lake. His game is interrupted when a convict escaping death row finds Buster unconscious (after one of his attempts at golf gone awry) and swaps clothes with him to make it seem as if Buster's the real convict. There's a sparkling sequence where Buster, unaware that he is wearing prisoner's uniform, readies himself to hit the ball as two cops stand to his left and right looking incredulously at him.

On realizing the change in his appearance, he gives them a slip and does manage to evade the not-so-bright cops until he finds shelter… in a prison! Then begins the prison saga, beginning with Buster meeting the love of his life - the socialite daughter of the prison guard – who tries to save Buster from death by switching the hanging noose with exercise rope. Another unforeseeable circumstance – a heavyset prisoner creating chaos in prison – leads to further mayhem. We wait and watch how Buster wriggles his way through each problem only to land into another until the film finds a fitting resolution to his tale.

Along with The High Sign, Convict 13 is probably one of my favorite Keaton shorts. It's like a harmless firecracker that sets off a chain of bombs, missiles and then the nuclear weapon itself! What was especially marvelous about watching Keaton was that while his character always had a smart solution for his problem, he never anticipated the possibility of a worse problem to occur. Consider the scene where he tries to escape from the army of cops; Buster walks in front of them as they follow him like a marching army, so when Buster turns in the opposite direction the cops stupidly follow turn along with him. That's when Buster sneakily escapes and finally hides behind a gate. Before he can take a sigh of relief, he turns to see where he is and finds out that he has reached right into a prison.

Later, when there's a riot in the prison and all the guards have been beaten unconscious by the burly cop, our Buster, again in dark about the riot, tries escaping the cops by knocking out one and wearing his uniform. He confidently enters the section wearing prison guard uniform, where the burly prisoner's waiting to knock him down thinking he's a cop. But Buster's not a prisoner and neither is he a cop; he is no professional golf player either so what is he?

This is answered in the next short: The High Sign. He's a man going nowhere, you'll find him anywhere and he'll land up somewhere. In a way, he's a wandering gypsy living probably the most adventurous life you can imagine. He's very unlucky, as evident by the number 13 given to his prisoner, but he never loses hope that he'll find a way out… almost.

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.