Il garage

Buster Keaton and Fatty Arbuckle team up for the last time for "The Garage", in which they play mechanics for whom everything goes wrong. It's clear that these two made a great comedy team. I'd go so far as to say that they were the Laurel and Hardy of their day. Probably would've continued had Arbuckle not gotten mired in a scandal.

As for the antics, there's a bathtub, a pole, and grease. I try to imagine how much fun everyone must've had filming it. I don't know if it's widely available (I saw it on YouTube).

Fun stuff.

The final collaboration between Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle and Buster Keaton, and the duo end on a high in a comedy that's filled with inventive gags and comical situations. They're mechanics at a garage who also double up as firemen. Keaton has a lot more screen time here than he had in the earlier of the 14 shorts he and Arbuckle made together, and the couple work extremely well together as near-equal partners.

Keaton and Arbuckle have come a long way since "The Butcher." It's wonderful to see how well they work together in this one.

Leave it to Buster to go *up* the firehouse pole routinely!

There is indeed a lot of "The Blacksmith" (1922) in this one; maybe that, as well as "Cops" (1922), were both Keaton's homage to Arbuckle during his legal trials (which began in late 1921).

Also, now I finally understand the bathtub scene with Sybil Seely in "One Week," which came out in September 1920 ("The Garage" came out at the beginning of that year). The cheesecake seemed out of place in "One Week," but I see now that Keaton was duplicating the scene with Molly Malone here in "The Garage." He did it so well, I had to look both shorts up to make sure different actresses played them.

"One Week" was the first short that Keaton made on his own, and perhaps that explains why "The Garage" is the last Keaton-Arbuckle collaboration.

Also, I used to think Seeley was the most athletic of the Keaton female co-stars, but Malone is even better here.

The scene with Buster running on that spinning disc is also done, in a very different setting, in "The Haunted House," a Keaton short that came out a little over a year after "The Garage."

That kind of collaboration giving a gem, because the clash between two different characters and two meanings of a garage are well used for fun, for inspired gags and as frame of a special form of nostalgia. A lovely short film reminding the genius of two great commedians.

Keaton and Arbuckle's final collaboration is also their finest. With Fatty soon moving on to feature-lengths and Buster continuing as a solo act, the prolific duo came together one last time to entertain audiences (and themselves) in a typically short, simple silent comedy.

They're a pair of mechanics this time, serving double-duty in a combination garage / firehouse, and incapable of finishing one job without creating two or three new ones. The various props and occasions of a busy day in the auto repair business provide ample opportunity for clever laughs, which Arbuckle and Keaton casually pluck like fresh fruit from an overburdened apple tree. It's jam-packed with smart, funny, groundbreaking material; twenty-odd minutes of nonstop escalation. A posh suitor, interested in dating the boss's daughter, sees his neat white suit (and thoughtful flower bouquet) summarily ruined by the bumbling duo, who happen to be working with motor oil nearby. Wobbly vehicles are rented out with no chance of leaving the yard. An enormous turntable, once used to wash and inspect cars, becomes a high-speed human dry-cleaning station and, soon enough, a treadmill.

There's so much rich, creative energy jammed into this small package, it's hard to believe the masterminds behind it were about to split apart. In time, that divorce would work to Keaton's benefit. Arbuckle, sadly, wasn't quite so fortunate.