Frigo et la baleine

It is the detail making difference by the other short films of Buster Keaton. A sad love story. A trip for cure the soul. A meet and a tyranic captain. A boat and military exercises. And the inspired end. The dream shadow is the perfect skin for what are more than adventures but interesting reflection about choices and heroism. And about adventures as root of perspective about life.

This short comedy is less polished than Keaton's best features, but it has some very funny moments, with a good finale that is clever and also suggestive. Keaton and the supporting cast pull of most of the gag ideas quite well. The setting might offer more limited possibilities than do many of Keaton's other short features, but they seem to have gotten the most out of the material.

The story opens with Buster, depressed because of romantic difficulties, setting off in a tiny boat to get away from it all, leading to many unexpected developments. Joe Roberts is well-cast as Buster's antagonist, and there are some amusing confrontations between the two. Virginia Fox also helps out.

Buster pulls off some good morbid gags, with his deadpan style serving well in making them work. There are also a number of nice subtle humorous touches. Most Keaton fans should enjoy this one.

Perhaps it is the clichéd framework of the film that puts me off; perhaps Keaton is not quite as ingenious in this film as in others. Whatever, `The Love Nest' lacks the effervescence of many of Keaton's shorts. He is quite innovative in some scenes, the best his being caught with a rifle in his hands; without losing pace, he proceeds to go out and shoot a fish. This is part of his true mastery, salvaging a situation with hilarious results. Joe Roberts, who appears in several Keaton films, is good as the sinister whaling captain.

Remarkable, typically inventive Keaton short, laced with a horrifying comic disregard of death and an emasculating admission of inadequacy. Buster is a heartbroken swain who decides to cure his loss by forswearing women and manfully taking to the sea. Here he meets a mad brute of a captain who throws overboard any of his crew that displeases him. Buster's entirely spurious skill endears him to the captain.

Besides being a wonderful parody of macho Ahab-like naval nonsense, this is another Keaton fantasy as metaphysical nightmare. Buster is cast adrift on a metaphorical sea, boarding the ship of death, with the Grim Reaper as his master. Prowess, ingenuity and sheer accidental good fortune keep him afloat until a climactic, heavily resonant, chase through a labyrinthine ship.

I don't mean to weigh the film down with pseudo-meaningfulness, but the humour of Keaton's films has an eerie, lingering, resonant effect on the soul, similar to the Alice books. Supposedly comic froth, visual metaphors from his films haunt the mind for years after as unerringly accurate encapsulations of the human condition. No wonder Beckett adored him, although I know whose comfort I'd rather have.

And the film is very, very funny, ridiculous, clever, awe-inspiring. The gorgeous clarity of the film's imagery, and the eerie composition of space combine to create a convincing landscape of the mind. Keaton's physical grace may seem less showy than Chaplin's, but its very suppleness in modesty astonishes, as does his graceful negotiation of obstacles and forbidding spaces. Indeed, it is Buster's very freedom of movement that is finally redemptive - although he is a mere automaton going through his creator's paces, his inevitable imperturbility and melancholy dignity achieves an aesthetic, transcendence of beauty and grace. The typical Keaton revelation that the movie is a dream is not bathetic - our dreams of adventure are never a joke; but more importantly, the anxieties and desires of these dreams are both recognisable and deeply , painfully disturbing.

Now here's a Keaton short I can confidently recommend.

In contrast to "The Boat", Buster is not at the mercy of physics here. This time he causes the chaos, and he's aware of it. He spends the duration wriggling his way out of trouble, instead of more deeply into it.

The absurd tone of the whole thing is set by the goofs in what is a sort of anti-"Dear John" letter ("PS If you do not receive this letter, write me").

But what makes this special is the revelation that this is one big slapstick dream. And...all of that is wrapped within another envelope of absurdity, exposed to us in brilliant visual shorthand -- add them up and you have something quite uniquely cinematic.