Chiaro di luna

After I've watched all of the more well-known movies of Buster's from 1920 to 1930 I'm beginning to dig into his older stuff. At the start of his career he was mostly a sideman of Fatty Arbuckle's and it took him some three years to step out of his shadow and shine on his own but as of 1918's 'Moonshine' he was still somewhere out there, not his usual self.

This two-reeler is full of visual and title card gags and in general the movie feels more like a mockery of those more serious dramas about bootleggers in the vein of works of D. W. Griffith circa 1912 and Fatty has the time of his life here. The script is mostly non-existent and, as the author himself puts it in the movie, it didn't have time to build strong character arcs and love relationships because of its short length - it just jumps into the action and for the whole 18 minutes it never stops. Comedy shorts of yesteryears didn't bother delivering the story - the main aspect was to make the viewer laugh, by any means necessary, and Fatty and Buster surely know how to do that.

The most memorable gag in my opinion is the one with seemingly infinite number of people getting out of a single car - it is done so splendidly and one can truly wonder how they manage to pull that off without any visible cuts to the scene.

All in all 'Moonshine' is a great entertainment piece of cinema history with Arbuckle at his prime and Keaton still developing his own unique style of comedy that he will become known for shortly afterwards.

It's a simple way to spend 23 minutes, but it had me smiling. A very early example of meta-cinema, it's a self-referential film with several clever little bits. Roscoe Arbuckle plays a federal agent trying to track down a band of hillbilly moonshiners, along with his sidekick (Buster Keaton). Oh, they show up with a small army of men who humorously all get out of a car one by one, which was a great gag, and never mind the fact that we never see all those others again.

While surveying the mountainous terrain Arbuckle and Buster stand perilously at the edge of a cliff, then Buster falls over the edge, and so naturally Arbuckle tries to pull him up by the hair. Later when Buster finds himself buried, Arbuckle aggressively digs him up, caring little for how close the pick axe may come to Buster's body, then washes him in the lake and hangs his entire body upside down in a tree. "Call me when you're dry," he quips. There is an edge to Arbuckle's character that I've come to appreciate; his persona was like a dark, untamed force that's a contrast to the sweeter aspects of Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd.

We see this edge in other characters in his films as well. The moonshiner's daughter (Alice Lake) is aggressively pursued by a creepy mountain man (Al St. John), but holds her own by walloping him in the face each time he kisses her. "Calm yourself, my child," her father cautions, "Wait until you're married to hit him as much as you wish." It felt a little wrong to laugh about this but I couldn't help myself.

As she struggles with her father, Arbuckle arrives on the scene and throws her in the lake. His show of strength endears her to him, which may come across as humorous or sickening, but I guess I chose the former. "I love you!" she says. When the father remonstrates, Arbuckle says "Our film is only a two-reel short. No time for preliminary love scenes!" The father replies, "In that case, go on... I don't care. I don't want to ruin your masterpiece," and that sarcasm directed against itself really made me chuckle.

Buster gets in a few moments himself, in one scene making wild faces at Al St. John (who makes a few of his own), then bounding off through the meadow like a chimpanzee before hanging in a tree and then being chased up its branches.

Arbuckle is captured and thrown into a pretty posh cellar. "How can I escape from this cell?" he wonders aloud, then cracks open a book and finds that it's The Count of Monte Cristo. "Thanks for the idea, Alexandre (Dumas). I'll play dead," he says, before pouring ketchup on himself and firing a gun into the air. Why he would still have a gun or the moonshiners would be fooled by ketchup, never mind, it's a comedy. We then get an exploding and reconstructing cabin with the film run backwards.

It's not a masterpiece but was creative and unique, something which went beyond the usual kinds of slapstick antics. Buster getting the girl in the end was a plus too.

Moonshine (1918)

Not Rated

Fatty and Buster travel into the woods to break up a moonshine ring but are captured by the rednecks. Only fragments of this short are known to exist, which is a shame because what's available is pretty funny. Fatty staging his suicide is the highlight of what's available.

Bell Boy, The (1918)

** (out of 4)

Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton play bell boy's at a lavish hotel where trouble is always happening. Not too many laughs here, although there are some good stunts involving an elevator as well as a nice scene where a bearded Satan looking guy is transformed into other people by a haircut.

It's funny. I've reviewed several Fatty Arbuckle shorts and this one had the lowest rating on IMDb--and yet it was by far my favorite! Oh well--to each his own.

I think the reason I liked it so much was because the film didn't take itself seriously at all! In fact, many times throughout the film, it made reference to the fact it was a film or that they were doing what they were doing because the director told them to! But my favorite was when Arbuckle met the girl and they instantly fell in love. He then commented that falling in love so fast was understandable since it was only a 2-reel comedy! It was a real riot and I wish more old-time shorts took such an approach.

Funny. And that's what you are looking for in a comedy anyway, huh?

The print of this silent comedy short starring Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Buster Keaton exists only in fragments today and that's what I saw on the Image Entertainment DVD of "The Best Arbuckle-Keaton Collection". In fact, the self-referential tone that other reviewers mentioned in their comments seemed to not to have been in what I watched. There are still a few funny gags that were presented like when Buster gets the men out of the car, there are a way lot more than what you'd expect of them coming out and it all seems to be in one continuous shot. Then there's the Buster-almost-falls-from-cliff-before-Fatty-becomes-the-almost-victim setup the was also good though this version seemed to have a few unintentional jump cuts due to overuse of film stock. After that, what I saw was a little confusing though the title cards and some more decent gags helped a little. So, according what I just watched, Moonshine is worth a look.