La noce de Fatty

Compared to the previous short I watched that starred Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle with Buster Keaton in support, His Wedding Night isn't all that funny though there are a few good laughs like when Roscoe changes the gas from 26 cents to $1.OO when a limousine arrives or when there's a food fight between him and his rival Al St. John for a girl's hand. Things really pick up when Buster arrives with the wedding gown as he first does a hilarious flip when he stops his bike and then-after trying the gown and keeping it on-he gets kidnapped by St. John and a couple of henchmen! There's also a mischievous scene when Arbuckle steals a kiss from a female customer while she's fainted from chloroform that Roscoe put in a perfume bottle that I was amused by. Otherwise, besides some boring spots there's also some racist humor on a couple of people of color that marred some of the enjoyment. Still, for all that, His Wedding Night was pretty enjoyable and I say this one's worth a look.

Roscoe Arbuckle and Buster Keaton made several enjoyable two-reel comedies together during Buster's apprenticeship as a filmmaker, but in my opinion His Wedding Night is not one of their better collaborations. It's an early credit for Buster, his fourth film, and he doesn't appear until almost the halfway point, but within moments of his entrance -- as a dress maker's delivery boy on a bike -- he promptly steals the show with a spectacular flip over the bicycle rack. (And he made such stunts look easy! Easy for him, anyway.) Buster also appears in drag, in a wedding gown no less, and milks his entrance in this costume for all it's worth.

Meanwhile, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle is up to his usual tricks. Here he's a clerk in a drug store, elaborately mixing malted drinks, flipping utensils in the air and deftly catching them. The location offers ample opportunity for of Keystone-style shenanigans, as when Fatty tussles with a mule, insults customers, bilks a rich man out of money for "gasoline" that is actually water, and once again engages in a rivalry with nasty Al St. John over a pretty girl. It's no mystery why Al St. John's character is always so unappealing in these comedies -- for one thing, when the girl jilts him he has a tendency to assault her, as he does here -- but it's remarkable that Arbuckle manages to be so likable when he behaves as he does. In this film, for instance, a running gag involving chloroform leads to a moment when Fatty deliberately renders a pretty girl unconscious so he can kiss her. You may or may not find that gag funny, but when he performs it Roscoe comes off like a naughty boy, not a pervert. Within a few years, of course, after the sex scandal that destroyed his reputation and his career, it would have been impossible for Arbuckle to have performed such a scene without stirring deeply unpleasant associations in viewers' minds.

Over all this film feels like a somewhat routine effort, not as inspired as the best Arbuckle/Keaton shorts produced for Roscoe's "Comique" company. For me it's marred by an interlude of racial humor near the beginning that leaves a sour after-taste. The scene involves a customer in the store, an African-American lady who is the butt of several gags -- literally, in one instance. Racial gags turn up frequently in silent comedy, and the scene in His Wedding Night is far from being the worst offender in the Comique series (that dubious distinction belongs to a mean-spirited sequence in Out West which ruins that film), but the bottom line where this comedy is concerned is that the material in question simply isn't funny.

The best Comique shorts, such as The Bell Boy and The Garage, are full of inventive gags and routines that still provoke laughs. His Wedding Night doesn't hold up nearly so well, but the limber young Buster Keaton provides it with some enjoyable moments, and he remains the best reason to watch.

'Fatty' Arbuckle works in the drugstore where he serves the drinks and also services the gasoline pump. He is about to marry Alice, the daughter of the drugstore owner. Al St. John, again, stars as Fatty's rival. When he gets pushed aside by Alice he decides to kidnap Alice. Unfortunately they kidnap delivery boy (Buster Keaton) who were just showing off the wedding dress to Alice.

Nothing too original, clever or inventive - Fatty again fights over a woman with his rival Al St. John. Buster Keaton's role is literally just being thrown around by others.

Most interesting moment in the movie was a scene, where Arbuckle's character (who were supposed to be sympathetic and heroic) drugged the female customers in the store to make out with them. Something that definitely couldn't pass nowadays.

This is another hilarious offering from Arbuckle, who plays a drugstore clerk in love with the pharmacist's daughter Alice (Alice Mann). Al St. John plays Fatty's rival for Alice. Buster Keaton plays a delivery boy who brings the wedding dress via bicycle. Buster models the wedding dress. St. John, thinking Buster is Alice, has his gang kidnap her ... er, him. This sets up a wild slapstick finish at the home of the Justice of the Peace.

There are crazy stunts galore in this two-reel film.

Some of the scenes probably could not be done today. Fatty pours chloroform into a perfume bottle and waits for a female customer to spray herself. He then springs a kiss on the unconscious girl. However, the gag is reversed somewhat when another female is apparently immune to the spray, and even drinks from the bottle. Another gag involves a male customer who is wildly effeminate. Also, St. John tries to choke out Alice.

For me, the cleverest gag is when Buster first arrives at the drugstore, and his eye is twitching. Fatty takes this as a "wink," winks back in understanding, and pours Buster a beer.

Buster Keaton had practically grown up on the stage. At three, the son of the owner of a traveling show along with the magician Harry Houdini, joined his father in a skit which had him disobeying his dad, only to be physically tossed around for his insubordination. Occasionally, Joe, his dad, was arrested for child abuse after the show. But young Keaton showed authorities his body sustained no bruises despite tossed into the scenery, the orchestra pit and even into the audience. The young boy learned how to fall. "The secret is in landing limp and breaking the fall with a foot or a hand," Keaton later said. "It's a knack. I started so young that landing right is second nature with me. Several times I'd have been killed if I hadn't been able to land like a cat. Imitators of our act don't last long, because they can't stand the treatment."

Buster was having such a good time getting thrown around he would giggle after he landed, causing the audience to become silent. He saw if he possessed a deadpan face after the stunts, the theatergoers howled in laughter. Transporting that trait onto film, he earned the nickname "The Great Stone Face."

It's a rarity Keaton was caught smiling in film. One of the few times he does appears in his third movie with Fatty, Aug. 1917's "His Wedding Night." Keaton plays a delivery boy bringing Fatty's fiancee, Alice, her wedding dress. Alice asks Buster to try it on to see if she likes it. He does, and he emerges from behind a partition smiling.

In a scene earlier in the movie, when a luxurious car pulls up to Fatty's outdoor gas pump, seen in the back seat are two women. One was Natalie Talmadge of the famous acting Talmadge sisters, who later were owners of their own studio. Natalie worked for Fatty as a script girl/secretary when she met Keaton. The two later fell in love, married, and had two children.