Le Dernier Round

Sybil Seely, Marceline Day, Brown Eyes: All of Buster Keaton's best on-screen partners were female. All but one. Snitz Edwards here plays Buster's faithful valet, a gnomish, gentle character whose eagerness to arrange whatever his master wants lands him in trouble.

Buster is Alfred Butler, rich and so passive he lets Snitz tap the ash off his cigarette. While on a camping trip, he meets a girl (Sally O'Neil) who strikes his fancy. Her father and brother disapprove of her going off with a "jellyfish." Snitz to the rescue: He tells them this is the same "Battling Butler" who just won the lightweight boxing crown. Alas, the ruse works too well.

You can argue that Snitz plays the title character here as much as Buster or Francis McDonald, who plays the boxer Butler. Whether laying out a ridiculously ornate table at Buster's camp site or laboring to keep up with his boss during an arduous run through the mud, there's no give-up in the guy.

"I'd like to marry that pretty little mountain girl" Buster says.

"Shall I arrange it?" Snitz answers. Buster nods, setting the plot in motion.

Like a lot of silent comedies, this is a film of pieces. The first half, of Buster and Snitz roughing it in the outdoors, could be a clever short all by itself. Buster's idea of duck-hunting is to row up to one wading in the water, and then lean out of the boat to point a shotgun at it at point-blank range. You expect him to fire and roll off from the gun's kickback, so naturally that's the one thing that doesn't happen.

The transition to the boxing comedy is well done, helped along by Snitz, McDonald, and O'Neil, really a cutie with her Zooey Deschanel eyes. It's O'Neil's desperate desire to see her man in the ring duking it out that forces Buster and Snitz to scramble in the last half-hour or so, coming up with all sorts of ruses. The comedy wears a bit thin at times with some protracted workout scenes in the boxing ring, yet Buster goes a long way to selling them with his amazingly elastic physicality.

Buster doesn't wear a porkpie in this film, and his pampered lifestyle distances you a bit more than his inexpressiveness usually did, but he has that dogged quality of classic Keaton heroes. He may not be the champion boxer his girl thinks he is, but he'll not give her up without a fight. "I'm going back and tell her the truth," he tells Snitz. "I'd rather lose her that way."

It's funny how "Battling Butler" doesn't really engage a lot of Keaton fans. Perhaps there's some resentment there because it was a hit for Buster right before "The General" flopped. Taken on its own merits, "Battling Butler" is a clever and engaging comedy with a likeably different lead role for Buster and a surprising double-twist ending, in which Buster (and the audience) have the wool lifted from their eyes one minute, only for Buster to do the same with us the next.

Maybe "Battling Butler" isn't as inventive as Keaton fans are used to, but it has its share of arresting visuals and a solid mix of varied comedic moments that still connect. Plus it works as a story all the way through. Finally there's the winning chemistry of Buster and Snitz, The Great Stoneface and The Great Cragface.

While it's a cut below Keaton's best features, "Battling Butler" has some good comic material and an amusing, if lightweight, story. There are some good performances from the supporting cast, a wide enough assortment of gags, and the story-line also gives Buster a chance to demonstrate a few of his many acrobatic talents.

The first few minutes contain lots of good visual gags as we are introduced to Keaton's hapless character. Then, when his identity gets tangled up with that of a prize-fighter, "Battling Butler", from there on in Buster finds himself in some increasingly complicated and tricky situations. As his character's physical ineptness is emphasized, Keaton's own agility and versatility are displayed in various antics. (The same is true to some degree of his character in "College".) Most of the specific stunts, though, are relatively routine compared to those in his best work.

In lesser hands, the fragile premise would run out of steam quickly, but here things keep moving along steadily, and there are some very good moments. It doesn't ever really hit high gear, though, and it's missing the kind of top-notch climactic sequence that distinguishes Keaton's best films. Thus it will probably be of interest primarily to those who are already fans of Keaton, but most such fans should find it worth a look. While there's nothing spectacular, there is more than enough good material to make it worthwhile as light entertainment.

Neither the prospect of eighty minutes of biting headwind nor snow showers has been able to keep me from the National Film Theatre over the three weeks so far of its Buster Keaton season, and every time the films have yet to disappoint: "Battling Butler" is no exception! I'd instantly give this a 9 if only I could justify it relative to the early scenes; despite the pitch of enthusiasm I'd reached by the end of the film, I'm still not quite sure in all fairness that I can.

It definitely takes a while to get up to speed (at the start, I took the father to be a doctor giving his sickly son only three months to live!) and for the initial reel or so it depends largely on a single extended gag -- the elegant fop's complete unsuitability for an outdoor environment. Alfred's elaborate al-fresco living arrangements echo Keaton's trademark fascination with complicated contrivances, and there's one very typical bit of misdirection where we wait for the shotgun's recoil to knock Alfred backwards into the water, only for a somewhat different turn of events to prove his downfall; but this film doesn't come properly to life until its hero engages our sympathy as well as being a walking joke. In "The General", we engage with Johnnie Gray almost immediately -- in "Battling Butler", Alfred remained a cipher for me until the moment when he nervously rehearses "Beatrice Faircatch"'s newspaper advice on making a proposal, with such an earnest air: it's funny, but it's also touching, and it's no coincidence that it is with his subsequent first steps towards standing on his own two feet -- tearing up and throwing aside the useless newspaper column -- that Alfred Butler may finally be said to have progressed beyond a simple one-dimensional character, and the film can really begin.

From here on the picture becomes a Keaton classic, sweeping the hapless hero further and further from the cushioned normality of his life with a series of escalating and plausible coincidences. Ultimately the worm will turn, of course -- but not in the time and manner that we are expecting. And Keaton acts here not just with that famous face but with every line of his whole body: triumph, exhaustion, despair, apprehension, indignation, timidity, pugnacity... and finally, in the last scene, sublime confidence in his own skin, modelling a costume so incongruous that only Buster Keaton could carry it off with such genuine elegance!

The scenes of Alfred's ordeal are hilarious and moving by degrees -- it's almost impossible to analyse Keaton's appeal. 'Sweet' is quite definitely the wrong word, as is 'lovable': Buster is no Little Tramp. 'Bittersweet' might be closer to the mark... or 'poignant'; the metaphor of the man who gets knocked down but keeps on trying has never been more apt. There is a brief vivid moment when Alfred, bewildered and worn out, turns his face aside into the arms of his second with such a hopeless little air that instead of a laugh, it raised a murmur of pity from the auditorium. But Keaton never allows himself to milk the audience for sympathy -- the best of his films may mingle laughter through tears, but he never falls into the trap of sentimentality.

I'm not sure if this is among the best of Keaton's films... but it's certainly one of those I've ultimately enjoyed the most so far. I've changed my mind: I'll give it a 9 after all, and say I'm dropping a mark down instead from a 10! :-)

One of the best paced of all Keaton films, `Battling Butler' is not uproariously funny but is consistently amusing and entertaining. Being mistaken for an up-and-coming boxer, Alfred Butler (Keaton) falls in love and marries on the basis of this mistaken identity. Trying to keep his wife from finding out creates the needed comic situation to allow the humor to emerge. His leading lady, Sally O'Neil, sparkles in her supporting role. Snitz Edwards, humorous in his own right, is a delight as Keaton's valet. The final scene is a gem!

A nice little comedy about a wealthy young man with nothing to do. He finds himself taking a trip into the mountain country to put some adventure into his life. It is here where he meets a young Mountain girl played by actress Sally O'Neil. Soon, Keaton and O'Neil fall in love and want to marry. The problem is O'Neil's father and brother are giant of men and won't allow her to marry such a small man. It is Keaton's butler / servant who gets the idea to lie to her parents by telling them that Keaton is a professional boxer (who happens to have the same name as Keaton's character (Butler). One lie leads to another as Keaton as to pretend he is a boxer. A nice story with some moments of comedy, Battling Butler is a Keaton comedy with very little stunt work from Buster Keaton. Besides the moments spent in the ring, Keaton hardly does any stunts. Most of the comedy comes from Keaton's silent comedy as oppose to his physical (stunt) comedy.