The Frozen North

The humour is uncharacteristically cynical for Keaton who cuts a wholly incongruous figure from the moment he emerges from a subway in the middle of Alaska.

A modern audience is unlikely to recognise his parodies of William S. Hart and Erich von Stroheim, but with London currently gasping through a heatwave all that snow sure looks good.

This is a somewhat odd Keaton short, and not all of it works that well, but it does contain some good material. It was written as a parody of some contemporary melodramas, and as such there are a lot of things that Buster's character does that would make more sense and/or would be funnier to someone familiar with the films that he was parodying. Nevertheless, it has some fine gags, with most of the best ones dealing with deliberate incongruities in the "Frozen North" setting. Keaton's imagination and creativity are evident in a lot of the details, even if the overall result is more uneven than usual.

I can imagine André Breton, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, Man Ray, Luis Buñuel, and Salvador Dali enjoying this Keaton short. A subway station in the frozen north, an attempted holdup of a gambling hall (a gag that only makes sense in the context of a film), the radiator of a sled overheating, golf clubs, a keep off the grass sign sticking up through the snow, etc.

The surrealist movement was influenced by the theories of Sigmund Freud and free association and his interpretation of dreams. Considering that The Surrealist Manifesto wasn't written until 1924, so it's very possible that this could have influenced the European surrealists.

I realize that this may seem like a lot of extra information, but having some knowledge of surrealism helps make this Keaton short more understandable and enjoyable. Even though this might seem disjointed, there is some logic behind all of this. If you don't believe me, just ask your analyst...

'The Frozen North' is far from being Buster Keaton's best works in the short film, but it is one of his most interesting ones. This is the only time when Buster Keaton plays a villain in his own movie. Although 'The Frozen North' parodies westerns and melodramas of that era (especially those of William S. Hart), the bad guy is the bad guy. The film includes some very genius little gags and some quite surreal ones (in the opening scene where Buster Keaton exits the subway station in the middle of the North Pole).

Although not the favorite one of most of the Buster Keaton's fans 'The Frozen North' is interesting (and way different) work of great comedic genius.

I saw the Kino Video transfer of this which came with an introduction that explained that it was incomplete and that most of it is pretty much destroyed. So I didn't really get the whole short, but what I did get I shall comment on.

The plot, as it were, is hard to connect because of the missing pieces, but in general it involves Keaton as a very different character than most of his films: this time, as a daringly evil but tragically incompetent ... somebody... that goes around shooting people and chasing women when he's not falling through snow and into frozen lakes. It's quite darker and drier than most of his stuff, as the concrete-faced Keaton goes along shooting and killing person after person... definitely not his usual stuff.

I liked the parodies and take-offs he did in this. It was quite funny, the little pokes at melodrama from Hart's work and so on. However, I'd still like to see a complete copy so that I could get an idea on how this movie flows.

--PolarisDiB