Tilyou1

I love this film! Damn ridiculous, by design.

I saw it in New York City's East Village (where most of the film was shot) at the Anthology Film Archives, and many times since on YouTube.

It's very fun in its own right - with its silliness and absurdism and terrific performances by Edgar Oliver, the late Jason Bauer and the lovely Jill Helene.

But it's also precious as a time capsule of a certain era of the East Village -- much in the same way as The Blues Brothers preserves an era of 1980 Chicago (when there was still a Maxwell Street music scene, and SRO hotels with a view of the loop elevated train). The humor of That's Beautiful Frank (and the mad performances that are its crescendo) is an echo of The Ridiculous Theatrical Company, and of the many East Village venues where graduates of that theater later performed. Some of it was filmed at 104 East 10th Street when that building was still structured as an unrehabilitated boarding house, and a nocturnal refuge of a Bohemian scene as distinct and fertile as the Beats, but never got a name.

The East Village theater scene the film depicts is long gone now (even if the theater started by Jason, Under St. Marks, is happily still going). Indeed, it was really an anachronism even when it was made -- harkening as it does back to the pre-AIDs era of the Pyramid Club and other East Village venues where so much silly and inventive theater took place. Okay, maybe that scene should not be ranked with Elizabethan England (and this film is not Twelfth Night), but it was distinct and fun, and this is its testament.

This movie is dated -- a time capsule -- well worth seeing.

The acting is (with a few exceptions) surprisingly naturalistic for 1932. Some of the accents seem over the top now, but they were real then.

Jimmy Durante tells the same jokes he told for 45 more years, but the movie explains how he got away with it -- he's fun to watch, and deserves his ample screen time.

The Buster Keaton character is funny too. Stodgy and wordy, he's his own straight man -- acting ridiculous with a straight face. Possibly no one did that act better until Peter Seller's Clouseau. The stodiness is too much sometimes, but also hilarious in others (when shows showgirls how to perform authentic dances of ancient Greece).

Possibly the movie influenced Mel Brooks "The Producers." Like that movie, Speak Easily uses the idea of mistakes and actor conflicts as inadvertently make a show a comedy and a success (Bogdanovich used the idea too -- in Noises Off). Also like that movie, there's a plan to save the day by shooting actors.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is perfect in its way: visually remarkable, assassinations as funny as slapstick, impeccable editing, great actors, and a convincing owl.

But for me, it's a miss by a mile. 6 unrelated stories that manage to be depressing and boring, sometimes at the same time. The tone varies from story to story. The first story is about a pointlessly murderous gun slinger -- told as a surreal musical. Other stories are darker and without the attempt at laffs. I skipped parts of it.

Pointless violence, pathos I don't need to see, everyone a March Hare unsympathetic and bizarre -- with no good or normal character to hold on to, or cheer. There's no Alice in this Wonderland, and all the Tweedledums are stupid, vicious, 2-bit caricatures, or all three. And talk too much.

Except for the owl, played by itself (or by a computer). There's some good fiddle music too.

The Coen Brothers have achieved greatness many times -- and always a strange greatness -- mixtures of darkness and humor never see before or elsewhere. They walk a miraculous and narrow line: at their best the comedy is the sugar pill for pathos - about people dysfunctional and doomed, but in movies that are fun.

But this time the line fails.