Moonshine

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.

Several people have commented that only fragments remain of this film, which seems completely inaccurate to me. The print I've seen many times (it's my 8-year-olds favorite of all of Keaton's films) has a complete story from beginning to end, runs as long as most 2-reelers, and never seems to jump more than a couple of frames. The print is in bad shape *visually*, but it seems pretty much all there to me.

In any event, it's a lovely film for the time, with Arbuckle and Keaton both simply wonderful. The funniest gag (at least to me and my 8-year-old) is the variation on the old clown car gag, where Keaton opens the door to a standard sedan and 49 guys get out (I counted)! Keaton's famed athleticism is well evident, but I was surprised at how strong Arbuckle was, as well. He tosses Alice Lake into the river as though she weighed twenty pounds. Arbuckle's great foil Al St. John (n mean athlete himself) is prominently figured and has a great chase sequence up and down a tree with Keaton while they both (for unknown but surreal reasons) pretend to be monkeys. The acknowledgment throughout the film that they are making a movie is funny and ices the cake of this primitive but very funny film.

In 1918, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was probably the second, or third, most popular comedian in cinema (after Charlie Chaplin and, perhaps, Douglas Fairbanks, depending on one's categorization). Although it might be changing now with the increased accessibility of his films, Arbuckle seems unduly ignored by film historians and aficionados of today, and it's been said that probably has much to do with the rape and manslaughter trials that ruined his career. That's unfortunate, as everything else I've heard, indicates that Arbuckle was a friendly man; Buster Keaton said he was "a truly jolly fat man". Moreover, he was one of the key pioneers in forming screen comedy; his name is right up there with Chaplin, Keaton, Max Linder, Mack Sennett and Hal Roach.

Yet, Arbuckle's comedy was less advanced, or refined, than Chaplin's burlesque. Like Chaplin, he had rid his films of much of the frenetic style of Sennett's Keystone, where the two both began their movie careers. But, while Chaplin was adding pathos and satire to his films at this time, while giving extended time to a fewer number of more elaborated gags, Arbuckle's humor remained very broad and retained the sketchy, knockabout gags of Keystone. "Moonshine" is no exception, yet those antics can still be funny enough, and this particular two-reel short is curious and, I think, especially funny because in it Arbuckle breaks down the fourth wall.

Some of the best comedies of the early silent period are parodies, from the one's that spoof a particular film ("Burlesque on Carmen", for example) or films of a single filmmaker ("Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life") to those that mimic the business of making movies ("Behind the Screen"). "Moonshine" is of the latter, but rather than being a behind-the-scenes type of film taking an inside look at film-making at a studio (of which Arbuckle had been in a few already), it pokes fun at movies and movie-making by itself being disassembled. "Moonshine" has its storyline, but the humor is in and the film is about disrupting that storyline to comment on and ridicule the film itself and the film-making process that goes into making it and other such productions. My favorite joke is when Arbuckle breaks down the fourth wall to explain to another character the reason for the implausibility of a plot turn: "Look, this is only a two-reeler. We don't have time to build up to love scenes."

Most of the self-referential humor, or self-parody, is in the intertitles. The film could have used more visual breaking down of the fourth wall, which could have been accomplished simply with a wink at the camera, for example. The print is also in poor shape, although I thought the flickering monkey climbing shot interesting as a result. Nevertheless, "Moonshine" is an interesting early effort at this kind of self-referential humor. And, it's considerably different from Anita Loos's scenarios and intertitles for Douglas Fairbanks comedies, some of which (such as "The Mystery of the Leaping Fish" and "Wild and Woolly") deconstructed in similar ways and with comical results, but not consistently throughout the picture as in "Moonshine". Aggrandizing upon this tradition, Buster Keaton, who costars in this and many other Arbuckle shorts, would make even wittier and more elaborated reflexive films, such as "The Playhouse" and "Sherlock, Jr."

"Moonshine" is a funny short comedy that serves as something of a self-parody. There is the usual slapstick, stunts, and other antics, with 'Fatty' and Buster as two revenue agents trying to crack down on a bootlegging operation. What makes it different is the satirical title cards, which poke gentle fun at many of the conventions of movie-making that were well-known even in 1918. A couple of them are hilarious. It's too bad that the print of this short is in such bad shape, because it's a funny little novelty, and it is also great to see a couple of famous artists who don't take themselves too seriously, and who can enjoy a few jokes at their own expense.

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.