La mission de Fatty

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.

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."

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.

This one's actually an incomplete print, pieced together from various damaged sources, so I won't give it a rating. I'm not even sure it was meant to see the light of day, frankly; it doesn't exactly feel cohesive. The narrative is all over the place, mixing straight storytelling beats with surreal fourth-wall breaks and puzzling director's notes in lieu of title cards. Arbuckle and Keaton play an aggressive, clumsy pair of revenue agents in search of an underground moonshine operation somewhere in the Virginia hills. During these adventures, they slip in a few good, fresh bits - a clown car exercise involving thirty-odd armed men and a literal cliffhanger that leaves Arbuckle pantsed on a precipice - but otherwise it's a lumpy, awkward production and the ending doesn't make a lick of sense. Which, I gather, was half the point.

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.