Sidewalks of New York

Sidewalks of New York (1931)

** (out of 4)

Buster Keaton plays a soft slum owner who falls for a woman (Anita Page) living in his building and plans on impressing her by fixing up the neighborhood and trying to make her bad brother a good kid. Keaton hated this film so much because MGM wouldn't let him have any artistic control and to his shock it became his most popular film, which was a bad thing since that told the studio they could do whatever they wanted with him. This was certainly a turning point in Keaton's career and while it's not as bad as its reputation it's certainly not the classics we're use to seeing the legend appear in. The biggest problem with the film is that it tries to be too many things at once and it doesn't do any of them very well. One moment it wants to be a comedy then it wants to be a drama and then we get more touches of a romantic comedy. The screenplay is all over the map and I found it to be too light for a drama and too mean to work as a comedy. There's a pretty ugly scene towards the end of the film when a wise guy tries to force the kid brother to kill Keaton and this stuff just doesn't work. The abuse shown at the kid who is forced to do some pretty bad things really comes off like abuse and it's hard to watch at times. Even though Keaton's hated doing this film he still manages to turn in a decent performance. Sure, this isn't the golden era of his career but he does have a few good lines and gets to show off some of his physical abilities but not enough. Page also comes off very good even though her role isn't written too well. The two actually have some nice chemistry together and make the film a lot better than it has the right to be.

Maybe this isn't the worst movie Buster Keaton ever appeared in, but in my opinion it sure felt like a long, long way to spend 74 minutes, and I regret to say that the 'The End' title came as something of a relief. Buster was a truly great comedian, but watching this film is no way to appreciate his talent, especially if you've never seen his best work from the silent days. Viewers unfamiliar with the details of his career should know right off that Keaton made this movie (and his other early talkies) during an unhappy stint at MGM, where he was denied creative control of his material and forced to take ill-fitting assignments. Sidewalks of New York is a prime example from a generally dismal series. Recently I was sorry to find a VHS copy of the film on the shelf with other videos at a local library, and to make matters worse they didn't appear to have any of Keaton's other, better movies, just this one. Wherever he is, Buster is grimacing.

What's wrong with it? Well, where to start? The dialog is generally labored and witless, but feels even worse because this is an early talkie with no musical score whatsoever, so the actors exchange their clunky jokes accompanied only by the low hiss of the soundtrack. Next problem, the casting is off. Buster has been assigned the role of Homer Van Dine Harmon, a dim-witted product of Old Money. This sort of part suited him in silent movies due to his elegant appearance, but it feels all wrong in a talkie because, let's face it, the man didn't speak in the cultivated tones of a moneyed person sent to the finest schools. (I'm trying to phrase this delicately.) Buster Keaton was a brilliant comic artist but he was not well educated, at least not in the conventional sense. He grew up backstage and learned all about show business, not subjects they teach at Harvard. His voice was harsh and his grammar was poor, and he tended to impose his own phrasing on the dialog he was given, so he'd say things like "That don't feel good." He doesn't sound like a child of privilege, and when he's given such bogus things to say as "You strike me as a trifle unbalanced," as in this film, he sounds even less so. Furthermore, Homer's dimness lacks the distinctive eccentricity Buster displayed in his best silent comedies: he's merely stupid. Worse still, MGM has placed Buster's annoyingly dim-witted millionaire in the middle of a sentimentalized Lower East Side slum, full of picturesque Little Tough Guys with nicknames like Baloney. The real-world euphemism for "Baloney" sums up this script succinctly.

The plot hinges on Homer's attempts to clean up the slum and provide the kids with wholesome activities; his primary motivation is to impress Margie (Anita Page), the older sister of one of the boys. The Hollywood ghetto feels phony, and the script's version of snappy dialog is painful at times, but even so this premise might have offered the potential for decent visual comedy if those genuinely dim-witted millionaires who ran MGM had allowed their star to develop some of his characteristic set-pieces. But no, this project has the look of something cranked out in a hurry, and the exquisitely funny routines we remember from Keaton's silent features have been reduced to mercilessly repetitive bits in which Buster gets punched, trips, flails, drops things, clunks his head, breaks more stuff, and falls over again.

Even Keaton's weakest comedies usually have a scene or two worth seeing. (Perhaps the only exception is the abysmal feature he made in Mexico in the mid-1940s: all prints of that one should be seized with fireplace tongs and tossed into a raging furnace.) Sidewalks of New York provides a moment or two, but the pickings are pretty slim. There's a modestly funny sequence in which Buster attempts to carve a roast duck, and another in which he and Cliff Edwards mess up an amateur stage performance, but any comedian worthy of the name could have performed these scenes. Keaton's MGM bosses just couldn't figure out what made him unique, or else they just didn't care. On balance, there's no compelling reason to see this movie, and I'd suggest that the 74 minutes it takes to view it could be more profitably and enjoyably spent watching any of Buster's silent features.

The directors of this film, Jules White and Zion Myers, were the directors of the successful Dogville Comedies at MGM. They were rewarded by being given a feature film to direct, that film being Buster Keaton in Sidewalks of New York. I'm sure Keaton was insulted being considered one step above canine stars at MGM, by reading his biography I know he was angry at the autocratic ways of Jules White who was used to directing four-footed stars and thus went about telling Buster how to be Buster. On top of that, their ideas of comedy just did not mesh. Jules White liked mayhem as comedy. This served him well at Columbia with the Three Stooges, but not here with Buster.

The story revolves around wealthy Homer Van Dine Harmon (Keaton) who has sent his assistant (Cliff Edwards) out to collect the rent at the tenements he owns. Edwards is sent home without the rent money and shoe prints on his face. Homer returns to the East Side with Edwards in tow to get the rents himself and winds up in the middle of a neighborhood fight between the kids on the street. At the same time he meets the older sister of one of the tougher kids, Margie (Anita Page), and falls in love at first sight. Margie's brother Clipper is on the verge of getting into serious trouble with the law by hanging around with hoodlum Butch. Homer decides - partly out of real concern for the kids, partly out of pining for Margie - to build a gym where the kids can play safely and get off of the streets and away from bad influences like Butch. Needless to say Butch is unhappy about this development and decides to get rid of the meddlesome Homer when he instructs Clipper to turn what is supposed to be a harmless play into an opportunity for a fatal accident. Will Clipper go through with it? Will Homer get the girl? Watch and find out.

There is one part of this film that is genuinely funny and inspired, and that is when the shy Homer is trying to figure out how to propose to Margie. He follows Cliff Edwards into a record store and Edwards has Homer use the titles of popular songs as the material for his proposal and record the whole thing. This seems to be working out quite well until Homer hits the last song title Cliff holds up, at which time he makes a comment that doesn't quite fit the rest of the recording and is certainly no way to conclude a proposal. This gag was good enough that Buster refurbished it years later when he was a gag writer on "Neptune's Daughter" and he used it in a scene between Red Skelton and Betty Garrett.

This film was a real disappointment to me overall. The gags largely consist of chases, food fights, and prolonged routines that have no sense of timing and just get tiresome. If not for the fact that this film is part of Buster Keaton's filmography I'd say avoid it entirely and find something more worthwhile to do with 74 minutes of your life. Since it is Keaton, it's probably worth one viewing just to say you've seen it.

I have great respect for the early movie comedians like Keaton, Chaplin, Laurel and others who created a character and developed situations and gags that fit the character's personality. They all had great autonomy within their own smaller companies, but found free reign disappear when they moved to the majors. "Sidewalks" is an MGM comedy with Buster Keaton; it's not a Buster Keaton comedy. It isn't bad, but other, even lesser comedians could have done as well because the "Buster" character doesn't appear here. Although some of the dialog is good and Keaton delivers it well, there's too much; he has an inner city gym for physical gags, but there's too little. The big studios never understood that comedians like Keaton, and later Laurel and Hardy, were their own writers, directors, and gag men. "Sidewalks" has much to recommend it, including some good support, but if you're looking for "Buster", or even "Elmer", look elsewhere.

Bumbling wealthy landlord Mr. Harmon (Buster Keaton) is surprised to find his property fall into chaos caused by rowdy kids. Margie Kelly comes to aid of her little brother and knocks Harmon down. It's love at first sight for him. He decides to help the kids to win her over. It's tougher than he imagined with Margie's brother Clipper working with criminal Butch.

Silent super star Buster Keaton had mixed results during the sound era. This film is one of his successes. It does allow Buster to do his physical comedy. It's relatively funny although the seriousness of Clipper's dilemma is not that fun. Buster is still physically impressive. I do miss a large constructed stunt. While this is not at the level of his silent classics, this does allow Buster to play his character and be the butt of the joke. The romance is nice. It's not high class but Buster does his work well.