The Boat

Buster continues to think big in his comedy, foreshadowing what he would do with that train in The General five years later. Here he demolishes a house towing his new boat out of a garage, has a Model T fall off the pier into the harbor, and has a boat launch end up with the craft going straight under the water, never floating, with him standing stoically as is sinks. That was as impressive a stunt to pull off so seamlessly as it was hilarious. Somehow he get the "Damfino" afloat, and then while motoring away from the dock, pulls the pier posts it is still tied to over, sending a couple of fishermen into the drink.

Forget needing drawbridges though. In a rare bit of his character's competence, his boat has a mechanism to pull its rigging down horizontal to allow it to pass under a bridge. Of course when he's distracted a second time, things don't end well. Later Buster pokes a hole in the craft while trying to hang a picture and the boat springs a leak, so he fixes it with one of his wife's hard-as-a-rock pancakes, which was amusing. That's not the end of getting wet of course, as a squall sets in while the family tries to go to sleep. Buster goes to the deck with an umbrella and it's instantly ripped out of his hands and lost. He pulls out a long telescope to search for land, but it arcs downward like a limp noodle. We then get this emergency radio signal:

"S. O. S." "Who is it?" "Damfino." "Neither do I."

That's before the craft rolls over and over in the water, causing Buster to run around like a hamster in a wheel. As his boat continues to be battered this way and that the laughs aren't quite as strong, but the film ends cleverly, with Buster hopelessly trying save his family in a teeny bathtub he's brought along for a life raft, but finding out they weren't as imperiled as he feared.

Lots of lighthearted jokes here but as James Curtis relates in his biography of Keaton, filming for The Boat was interrupted in September when Buster heard that his friend and mentor Roscoe Arbuckle has been jailed in San Francisco, charged with the manslaughter of Virginia Rappe. Distraught, he called a halt to production and didn't shoot the following day either. Tearfully, he said "What right has anybody to condemn a man before he is heard?" It's a poignant backdrop to a funny film.

This is definitely one of Buster Keaton's better short films. The key is the simplicity of the premise...Keaton's character builds a houseboat...and the multitude of problems that it causes.

The jokes are simple but usually funny (even now in our more "enlightened times" and Keaton's slapstick acrobatics are, as usual, simply wonderful to watch. He uses that one basic, if large, prop...the boat...to great effect.

And the final line, while an old joke, is still funny.

'The Boat' shows Buster Keaton as a boat builder, taking his wife and two children to the launch of his boat. As the four hit the ocean they learn there are quite some surprises to this boat. That things will not happen as planned is an understatement. Although there are quite some nice gags in this short film, it is only mildly funny.

The first half is so much more entertaining than the second, which seems a little boring. It uses more of the same gags and the new ones play too long. Keaton is able to show his physical a couple of time, using the entire boat as a prop, making this short a nice part in his oeuvre. On the other hand, he could have done without 'The Boat'.

This was a short that had no long term goals. If not from dumb luck, this movie could have been lost forever. This was found among a series of other shorts that Keaton had kept at home. In many ways, this is a rip off of Chaplin. Nothing seems to go right for this little "Tramp" as he is pushed around and put into one situation after another. Not as funny as many other Keaton classics, it is worth keeping on tape for future generations to enjoy. In many ways, this and The Love Nest are often found with Keaton's classic the Navigator. Both have to do with Keaton on the Ocean. This alone keep them together in a category. If you like Keaton, you'll enjoy this one. If not, you'll agree that this is a dime a dozen for Keaton.

Keaton always said that if he had not been a comedian then he would have become an engineer. This short shows that he had quite the talent with gadgets.

Keaton plays a family man who has built a boat and plans to take his family - his wife and two sons - out for a day's pleasure.

The first impediment he faces is getting the boat out of the garage in which he built it. The door is not big enough. Eventually the door is almost big enough, he pulls the boat through the enlarged door, and it takes enough of the rest of the supporting wall with it that one side of the house comes down, revealing furnishings within. I don't think that this was a tear down.

Next is the launching. You may wonder how a boat sank and then was retrieved from the water in OK condition. The boat launch, in which the vessel slides out of the launching ramp and sinks straight into the water, took three days to film and there were actually two 35 foot boats constructed for the short. The biggest problem was that the boat that was supposed to sink did not sink cleanly and multiple attempts were required.

This short is different in that, for once, Buster is not trying to get the girl. He already has her, is married to her, and has two children. What's surprising is that she is so easygoing about the destruction of her home and then the possibility of drowning at the hands of the weather and Buster's bad judgment. Sybil Seely played the wife in this film and in several other Buster Keaton shorts including "One Week".