The High Sign

The 'High Sign' has to be my favourite Buster Keaton short and it just so happens to be the first independent film Keaton produced, giving birth to his iconic unnamed character. However, Keaton was reportedly disappointed with the short and didn't release it until the following year, instead making One Week his first solo short. I question why though as I feel the premise of The 'High Sign' is one of Keaton's most inspired and even worthy of being used as the set-up for a feature - it's true what they say, the artist is often wrong about their own work. The opening prologue of The High Sign states "Our hero came from Nowhere- he wasn't going Anywhere and got kicked off Somewhere"; and considering his superhuman stunts, Keaton is like an alien who just landed on Earth. This opening prologue reminds me of a statement Roger Ebert made in his review of The General; "(Keaton) seems like a modern visitor to the world of silent clowns".

The 'High Sign' packs in so much gags and material into its 21-minute runtime, chocked full of blink-and-you-miss-it moments in the story of a wannabe gangster who also becomes a bodyguard for the man he is assigned to kill. The gag involving Keaton's set-up with the dog, the meat and the string (it's hard to explain) is reminiscent of something Mr. Bean would conjure while the short also features the earliest example I've seen in a film of a recurring gag with the high sign itself, a secret signal between the members of a gang known as The Blinking Buzzards. Keaton even messes with the audience's expectation for comic effect by walking past a banana peel on the ground only to not slip on it. Furthermore, the short's finale is a real "How did they do that?" sequence. The house with its traps and secret hatches is an astounding piece of set design and when four rooms on duel levels appear in the frame at once in which Keaton jumps back and forth between them, it reminds me of a 2D platform video game. I was laughing, in awe and was even shocked (when the gangster's neck is closed on the door) all at once. All of this takes place within a nostalgic, Coney Island-like setting (filmed at Venice Pier in Los Angeles) and even features the appearance of a man at the 11 minutes mark who bears quite a resemblance to that other great silent comic, Charlie Chaplin (intentional or not?). I'll say it now and I'll say it again; the genius of Buster Keaton will never cease to amaze me.

This little gem of a movie is chock full of inventive gags that will keep you laughing. There are the usual physical ones, such as the house and its many entrances/exits. What had me intrigued were some of the sight gags as well. The dog and the bell was amazing to watch. Each and every corner in Keaton's world has something wondrous around it. The man was an amazing athlete, and it shows here. Watch for the weird guns throughout the film. They don't make sense but then again they don't have to.

This begins with Buster being a crook. First, he steals a newspaper from a man riding a merry-go-round. It turns out to be the biggest newspaper you have ever seen! He sees a "help wanted" ad for a worker in a shooting gallery. You must be "crack shot." Buster isn't, of course, but he cheats again and gets the job, thanks to a little (and very clever) scheme with a little dog. (Buster is not an honest man in this movie, but he sure is resourceful!).

The arcade is run by a giant of a man (Charles Dorety?) who is a member of the Blinking Buzzards, a brutal secret group of extortionists and hit men. One of the men on their hit list is the town tightwad: "August Nickelnurser." The latter, knowing his days are numbered, walks by the arcade, sees Buster, and hires him as his bodyguard. The big villain-arcade owner (no name was ever given him) comes back, takes Buster to the Buzzards hideout, makes him a member and gives him his first assignment: kill Nickelnurser.

Holy cow - Buster is both the bodyguard and the hired assassin for the same man!!! What to do?

This fantastic premise - to be played out in the second half of the film, doesn't really get going until the final few minutes, unfortunately. We have to sit through a few meaningless scenes back at the arcade. However, when Buster, the target and his cute daughter, and all the Buzzards all wind up in the same house - a great house filled with trap doors....the finish is fantastic!

Some people -- to paraphrase Mel Brooks -- call Buster Keaton a genius. But that's both too little and too much to give him credit; Einstein was a genius, Keaton... is incredible.

In the Fatty Arbuckle films he's amusing in what we tend to put down as a 'silent-comedy' way, a {by and large} straight-faced clown in a world of food fights, cross-dressing, clumsy cops and general anarchy. After exposure to a few hours of these I was, frankly, ready to write Keaton off as simply another sub-Laurel-and-Hardy slapstick act -- in the Arbuckle shorts he's reasonably funny but nothing to rave over. And then, suddenly, in the middle of the programme, came "The High Sign"... and it knocked me for six here, there, and into the middle of next week.

As a solo debut it's nothing short of astounding. It's the spectacle of a great talent emerging fully-formed and all at once into unique existence, like Athena from the head of Zeus. From the opening scene, the style, the humour, the devices, the sheer *intelligence* are instantly, blazingly original: this isn't just 'silent comedy' to be laughed at and over by the modern public with an air of faint condescension, it's surreal and hilarious and utterly gifted to side-splitting effect by anyone's standard. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before. And the audience reaction -- from the former good-natured 'look-he's-dipped-the-bouquet-in-the-dirty-oil' laughter to the sudden roar of genuine surprise and delight -- was instant and electric. Suddenly, it was we who were eighty years behind the times, belated recipients of a moment of magic. Director, acrobat, actor, gag-writer, cinematographer, stuntman... for the first time Buster Keaton was set free into the universe of his own imagination, with confidence, grace and meticulous inventive brilliance, and before our eyes -- how could we not know it? -- a star was born.

Even more incredible to learn, and yet true, is the fact that Keaton himself rejected and suppressed this first film as insufficiently original, holding up release for a year: no-one ever saw it at the time. He knew he could do better and, unbelievably, he was right. But that's another story...

This is the kind of pleasantly silly and very funny film that typifies the very best of these old silent short slapstick comedies. It's fast-paced and filled with clever gags, and a couple of especially hilarious scenes. It starts when Buster tricks everyone into thinking that he is a crack shot, and thus finds himself hired by a rich miser to be his bodyguard, while also being recruited by a gang of criminals (the 'Blinking Buzzards', who go around saluting each other with the 'High Sign') to assassinate the same man. There's not much else to the plot, which is mostly a setup for a lot of zany antics. It's funny all the way through, and there is some especially good use of props and settings in this one. It's just slapstick fun, nothing to take seriously, but slapstick doesn't come much better. This is highly recommended for fans of silent short comedies.