Fatty à la fête foraine

Coney Island is a quick churn out with thirty minutes of standard slapstick and pratfalls featuring silent giants Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton. Arbuckle was the biggest (figuratively speaking) thing in silents at the time save Charlie Chaplin and its easy to see how this self effacing big kid with a sweet face to match must have regaled the audiences of his day.

In Coney Island he plays a bored husband at the beach and though susceptible to adultery and forced to don female attire and hang out in the ladies dressing room Fatty easily sanitizes the whole situation with his cherubic arrested development.

Buster Keaton plays a supporting role that offers more than the stone face he would maintain in his prime and while the injury producing stunts are well in evidence it's unpleasantly out of character to see Buster busting a gut laughing or breaking into tears. Al St. John matches Buster in pratfalls and Alice Neilson as Fatty's wife is comically and forcefully shrewish but Coney Island is little more than a basic Keystone Cops two reeler filled with the obligatory orgy of people falling down and being batted about the face an head.

If you enjoy low comedy, i.e. low to the point of downright crudity, with plenty of slapstick, strenuous mugging, cross-dressing, and general anarchy -- Congratulations, you've come to the right place! The two-reel comedy known as "Coney Island" is a prime example of the sort of rough-housing that made Roscoe Arbuckle one of the top comedians of his era, second only to Chaplin in popularity. It's also a good example of the kind of comedy Arbuckle would soon outgrow, thanks at least in part to his newfound colleague Buster Keaton, who influenced Roscoe to employ more low-key and sophisticated comedic elements in his work. But that would come later. Here, in this early appearance, Buster overacts as shamelessly as everyone else, uncharacteristically grinning, laughing, and even indulging in Stan Laurel-style weeping. In addition to his prominent role as Alice Mann's escort, Buster doubles as mustachioed policeman in the movie's climax (he's the cop relieved of his trousers by Roscoe in the jail house), and also acts as Alice's stunt double in the water slide sequence. They sure did keep the guy busy.

Like so many comedies of its era, this one is built around escalating rivalries over a pretty girl. Initially, Buster is Alice's Coney Island date, but he loses her to creepy Al St. John -- how humiliating! -- who in turn loses her to Roscoe, who must first ditch his homely wife. After various shenanigans at the amusement park Roscoe and Alice wind up at the beach, where they must "hire" bathing suits, and this is where things turn a little strange. Seeing as how there are no men's swim trunks on hand large enough to fit him, Roscoe pilfers and dons a lady's XXX-tra large swimsuit instead. Alice, who doesn't seem to find this turn of events the least bit odd, helpfully finds him a curly wig to wear. Roscoe is in drag for the rest of the film, even when flirting with yet another girl who crosses his path. Somehow, when Arbuckle performs this kind of shtick it's not only amusing but strangely innocent, which is not to say there aren't some weird undercurrents. Anyhow, it all ends in wild mayhem at the jail house, leaving the viewer exhilarated and a little dazed.

This is primitive stuff all right, but it has a number of things in its favor. When the film was made the star comics were young and healthy, and had every reason to expect bright futures ahead. Their exuberance comes across strongly. (I happened to watch this film back-to-back with a short comedy called The Railrodder which Keaton made in Canada more than 45 years later; the contrast between the grinning, muscular 21 year-old Buster we see here and the grizzled, exhausted yet still game old man he would become was harrowing and poignant.) In this Coney Island romp everyone is buff, happy, and full of mischief, and they look like they're having a blast.

For that matter, Coney Island itself looks pretty spiffy here and boasts some really cool looking rides, and that's another plus. This film serves as a historical record of the legendary amusement park in its prime, and it features several great shots that have turned up in various documentaries about the place. The Coney Island of 1917 looks almost as clean and well maintained as the Disney theme parks of today, and this too is poignant: I happened to visit Coney Island myself a couple of years ago, and I'm sorry to say it's not such a cheery place anymore. The only way to visit that bright and happy Coney Island, vicariously anyway, is by seeing this film.

Coney Island (1917)

**** (out of 4)

Fatty Arbuckle travels to Coney Island where he competes with Buster Keaton for the heart of a girl, which leads to havoc. This is a wonderfully funny short that allowed Keaton to show off his grace as a physical comedian. The ice cream, fish fighting and waterslide gags are certainly the best. The laughs fizzle out towards the end but this is still hilarious.

You can view this short on The Forgotten Films of Fatty Arbuckle set, which features four discs worth of shorts as well as some nice extras. Remastered prints and new scores make this collection of films a must have.

When you watch several Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle's movies in a row then you can notice that he was quite one note comedian, unlike his much more famous colleagues Charles Chaplin or Buster Keaton. In 'Coney Island' Fatty doesn't fight for the love of a woman, in this one he tries to evade his wife to spend the fun day at the luna park. Still, he meets gorgeous girl to whom he falls in love and again he has to fight off competition. At least 'Coney Island' doesn't include too much food fights, only couple of ice creams get thrown around, but Fatty still dresses up as a woman. This time he does it for the access into the bathing house.

Good enough to pass 25 minutes to get couple of laughs (mostly from Buster, though).

This short comedy starts a little slowly, but it picks up as it goes along, and it has some good material. The "Coney Island" location is interesting, and makes for a variety of settings and scenery. Some of the material is a bit routine, at least in the first half, but it gets better towards the middle, and it has a typical Arbuckle/Keaton manic finale.

The comic trio of Keaton, Arbuckle, and Al St. John work well together as usual, and together they pull off some creative gags, making even the implausible ones work all right because of their timing and teamwork. Their romantic rivalries can get pretty silly, but are still funny.

The cast and the story use the setting to good advantage, and while there is nothing brilliant about it, this is a pretty good short comedy, and it is worth seeing for any fan of silent comedies.