One Week

A house. Not assembled. A young couple. And a week. One of the most seductive films of Buster Keaton. For imagination, for the feel to see an animation, for lovely-dramatic story - the storm has a lead role- for the end and for the trait of genius. Something sad - magic defines this short film. One of the lovely ones for its humor and for the beautiful way for explore the force of details.

One Week and The Scarecrow are the only two silent films that I can watch over and over and over and laugh like a maniac each time I see them. I have seen hundreds of silent films and seen hundreds of performances, but there is no performer, past or present, who was as versatile, good-looking, and out and out funny as Buster Keaton. He is the king to which all comedians should aspire and he leaves Chaplin thousands of miles behind in terms of comedy. Personally, I can't watch Chaplin without being all too aware that I'm supposed to be in a music hall. Keaton, however, isn't hindered by his vaudeville roots and can make a laugh-out-loud domestic comedy using vaudeville tricks without making it seem like a recreation of a vaudeville routine.

Man, this 19-minute Buster Keaton short is almost too exhausting to watch as one crazy scene after another is shown. This is a wild and always-entertaining short, considered one of Buster's best. It's total lunacy.

Newlywed Buster and his bride (the pretty Sybil Sealey) get a "portable house" as a wedding present. When they get to the site, they find out they have to build the house themselves.

A poor loser who lost the girl, "Handy Hank," sabotages the house-building process by fouling up the numbered directions. When finished, the house is a little strange, to say the least! One look and you are guaranteed to laugh out loud. Anyway, there's work to be done decorating and adding a few more little things like th chimney or trying to fit a piano through a front window.

A calendar is shown throughout the movie and we see the daily "progress." Obstacles are many but the couple persists and kisses their way through all the problems.

Most of the film turns out to be sight gags and slapstick, especially when they have their "housewarming" at the end of the week and a big windstorm literally turns the house into a "merry-go-round."

If that isn't enough, you should see the ending when the train.......

Buster gets married, and as a wedding present his uncle gives him and his new bride some land and a house to go with it, but only when they get to the lot do they realised that the house is not yet assembled!

The framing device of the week both gives Keaton the opportunity to devise seven comic episodes, and also gives the whole piece a wonderful unity. I rank this alongside The Boat (1921) as one of Keaton's best shorts, alongside The Electric House (1922) for the best use of gadgets (in case you didn't know, Keaton trained as an engineer, and so his films are filled with marvellously clever gadgets), and alongside The Scarecrow (1920) for general fun and enjoyment.

For me, this was THE perfect Keaton comedy.

An early Buster Keaton short which still has an enormous amount of charm all these years later, and which has plenty of laughs throughout its running time.

First there's a wedding, and the newlyweds almost don't make it to their wedding night; and then there is the portable house they have to start from scratch! Of course this means the house looks wrong, it falls down, lots of stunts and scenes are set up to make the audience gasp and chuckle, and so on.

'One Week' is a really fun film and one which is timeless. Keaton would make many more shorts and his great feature-length movies were yet to come, but this is charming snapshot of what was to come.