College

While not one of Buster Keaton's very best films, this one has some enjoyable sequences and some good comedy material.

The plot is fairly simple, with Buster as a bookish college student who feels that he must succeed at athletics in order to win the girl he wants. It doesn't have the brilliant creativity of Keaton at his best, but on the other hand it does have some very funny moments.

Some of the best parts are the misadventures of Buster's character as he tries his hand at various sports. Even in portraying a character who is athletically inept, Buster demonstrates his own great ability at physical comedy. There are some fine gags in these scenes, and there is some good subtle material in the other parts of the movie.

For those who are not familiar with Keaton, there are several better examples of what he could do. But if you enjoy his brand of humor, you'll certainly want to see "College" too. It's more low-key than usual, but it has plenty of good material that makes it worth watching.

College (1927) was an interesting film that Buster Keaton made during the later days of the silent movie period. In "College", he plays a student who tries all kinds of school sports just so he could impress a girl he's fallen head over heels for. As usual the film is a showcase for Buster Keaton's talents as a stuntman, comedian and director. A little known film but it's one of his better ones. If you're a fan of the silent cinema or a Buster Keaton fan I advise you to pick up a copy of "College". A nice little film that has a "sweet" ending.

Recommended.

A I don't know how many different running times there are for this movie.

The one I saw clocked in at a little over an hour.

While this may seem a rather lightweight effort considering it came in the same year that produced 'The General (1927),' 'College' is an excellent little film in which Buster Keaton exploits the endless slapstick possibilities offered by sporting activities. Keaton plays Ronald, an unpopular bookworm whose public condemnation of athletics leads his girlfriend (Anne Cornwall) to dump him in favour of a more physically-capable jock (Harold Goodwin). In an attempt to win back the love of his life, Ronald enrolls himself in college and tries his hands at every sport in sight, with hilarious consequences. The two preceding sentences pretty much summarise the entire film. However, this inkling of a narrative is more than enough to open up a vast range of entertaining gags, and Keaton snatches a laugh at every opportunity.

How do I begin to list my favourite moments from 'College?' Though some have complained of the repetitiveness of the sequence in which Keaton tries every athletics activity in the book, I thought it was the highlight of the film. The scenes follow a very strict comedic routine: first we see how it is supposed to be done, then we see Ronald's absurdly inept attempt. Wash, rinse, repeat; this time with a completely different sport. Of course the routine becomes somewhat predictable, but Buster Keaton is always the uncertain variable. We don't know how his next effort is going to fail, but we know it is, and that it's going to be a spectacular failure. Ronald is a hopeless case, but you can't deny that he's got heart. Whether he is being out-sprinted by a pair of young children, falling short of the long-jump sandpit, snapping a pole-vaulting stick in half or planting his face two feet underground after clearing the high-jump bar, he is always courageous enough to get up, brush himself off and try again.

I've read that Harold Lloyd explored similar territory two years earlier with 'The Freshman (1925),' a film I haven't seen yet, so that one's probably a good film to look up if you, like me, enjoyed this one. It is also believed that there was originally a sequence showing Ronald's attempts to play American football, though this was ulimately cut to avoid comparisons with Lloyd's movie. Additionally, I was interested to read that Ronald's pole-vault through the window was one of the few times in Keaton's career that he didn't perform his own stunts. I'm certain that the danger-level was definitely not the problem {anybody who's seen 'Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)' will attest to that}, but pole-vaulting must have been one activity that he simply couldn't pull off. I don't blame him.

COLLEGE (United Artists, 1927), directed by James W. Horne, is something of a sort-after silent classic inspired by Harold Lloyd's more successful college comedy, THE FRESHMAN (1925), starring Buster Keaton demonstrating on how to fail as an athlete without really trying.

The story opens one rainy afternoon with Ronald (Buster Keaton), carrying his umbrella, walking along side with his mother (Florence Turner) to attend his high school graduation ceremony along with his other classmates: Mary Haines (Anne Cornwall), the girl he loves, and Jeff Brown (Harold Goodwin), his rival for Mary's affection and star athlete who is finally graduating after seven years. Ronald, the school's "most brilliant scholar," receives his diploma, and is asked by the members of the faculty to speak on the "Curse of Athletics," which he does. After degrading sports by saying "The student who wastes his time on athletics rather than study, shows ignorance" and "Where would I be without my books," wins approval with the teachers but not with his classmates, especially Mary, who finds his speech ridiculous. Because Ronald loves Mary, he finds he might now really lose her to Jeff (Harold Goodwin). As Mary and Jeff register at Clayton College, Ronald decides to enroll there also, and with no financial support from his mother, he decides to work his way through college where he intends to win back Mary's affection by becoming an athlete himself.

In true Keaton fashion, he tries out in all sports imaginable, ranging from baseball, track and field events, shot-put and finally as a coxswain on a varsity crew team in an important race, and flunks. Even while working as a soda jerk and as a waiter, he fails at that, too. But after he learns that his girl is in trouble does he pull out all stops in making himself a success without realizing how good he actually is.

COLLEGE may not be as well known as Buster Keaton's other silent film comedies, including two of which come to mind, SHERLOCK Jr. (1924) and, of course his masterpiece, THE GENERAL (1926), but it's a simple-minded story set against a college backdrop that features plenty of sight gags and sports activity to make this one enjoyable, especially to any avid sports fan.

The supporting players include: Snitz Edwards as the college dean; Grant Withers, Sam Crawford, Buddy Mason and Flora Bramley. While these names are not particularly well-known, it's the Buster Keaton name heading the cast that has generated interest in this comedy, then and now.

COLLEGE was one of the twelve selected films to appear during the summer months on public television's 1975 weekly presentation of "The Silent Years" as hosted by Lillian Gish, with a piano score and color tints from the Paul Killiam collection. Before the airing of the feature-length silent comedy, Gish would talk a little about Keaton's career and how he became known as "Buster,", present a 20-minute comedy short, ONE WEEK (1920), and then ask for the viewers awaiting to see COLLEGE to not be offended with one particular scene where Keaton's character of Harold is working in a restaurant disguised as a "colored" waiter. This plea would still reflect upon viewers of today.

COLLEGE, which is available on video cassette and DVD, can be seen in various ways, depending on the distributor, especially with its time length. Blackhawk Video's version accompanied with the same piano score that was used in "The Silent Years," runs at 60 minutes; while Video Yesteryear's accu-speed version with organ score runs close to 100 minutes. A more recent and recommended (1992) restored version with clearer picture and a fine new organ score by John Muri, running at 65 minutes, was the one formerly shown on cable television's American Movie Classics (1997-2001), and later on Silent Sunday Nights on Turner Classic Movies.

In spite of a handful of college-sports films produced during this period, it's interesting to point out that such legends of screen comedy as Charlie Chaplin and/or WC Fields have never attempted this. Future film comedians as Lou Costello and Jerry Lewis have done such, and probably were inspired by the likes of Lloyd or Keaton. However, COLLEGE is minor but enjoyable Keaton at best that would be a fine addition to any film buff's video or DVD library. (***)

,

Purists like to dismiss Buster Keaton's ninth feature as an atypical and thus somehow unworthy commercial compromise forced by the relative failure of his previous masterpiece 'The General'. But while it may not have the deeper resonance of other Keaton comedies it certainly isn't lacking for laughs. The scenario itself is common enough, presenting a variation of Harold Lloyd's popular college comedy 'The Freshman', featuring Buster as an Ivy League bookworm attempting athletic competition to impress a disinterested girlfriend. But the bits of comedy in between the plot lines are unique and many, making this a film of details, some of them quite startling: Buster, carrying a tray of soup, doing a backward somersault without spilling a drop, or trying his hand at every possible track and field event with predictably embarrassing but inventive results, or adding a hilariously cold-blooded epilogue to the happily-ever-after fadeout. No matter how familiar it might appear in outline, the world inhabited by Keaton was all his own, and always contained surprises enough to delight the unwary, inattentive viewer.