Les ruses de Malec

This is a marvelous work of comedy, perhaps one of the very finest of all short comedic films. The ingenuity of Keaton is endless as we see him and his roommate eating breakfast. The dual function of common household objects is incredible. Other stand-out scenes are those with the dog and Keaton as the scarecrow. Although this short work consists of a series of segmented scenes, there is still a fluidity that is quite pleasing. I introduced this work to a couple of teenagers. No complaints about black and white, no objections to its lack of talking. Just laughter and more laughter. `The Scarecrow' is a masterpiece.

The Scarecrow belongs among Buster Keaton's best two-reelers with others like The Boat and One Week. Buster gets chased through half the picture by a very clever dog. The rest is with Sybil Seely, Keaton's cutest girl co-star. The dog runs Buster through the ruins of an old adobe house, up a ladder and into a mountain of hay. Seely dances amid the bales then coyly misinterprets Buster's bended knee as a proposal. In the scarecrow scene he quickly kisses her, she runs into the middle of the river astonished, and delivers a double-take in close-up that's priceless! They somehow end up on a speeding motorcycle with a minister who marries them just before they plunge into a river. The dog is wonderful, Buster's rival is suitably oafish and there's even a great part for 'Big Joe'. The Scarecrow has less of the impossible stunts Keaton was known for but it flies along at break-neck speed from beginning to end and has enough material in two reels for six or seven

If you love chase scenes, this Buster Keaton short is for you! Before any chases, however, we see Buster and his roommate, Big Joe Roberts, as they get ready for breakfast, eat it with the aid of a very clever pulley system (you have to see this to believe it) and then clean up. The big one-room house is nothing but gadgets and they are all fun to see.

Then Buster thinks a small "mad dog" is chasing him and the two go round and round both outside and inside the house, and even around the tops of a brick wall. It's clever and fast-moving slapstick.

Buster then winds up being chased by the father of the female (Sybil Sealey) that both he and Joe are enamored with. After that short chase, in which Buster disguises himself as a scarecrow, he winds up getting Joe and the father fighting each other. When they discover Buster is the culprit behind that, they both take out after Keaton....and on and on it goes, with Sybil joining in......overall, a tremendous 19 minutes of sight gags, slapstick and general mayhem.

I'd have to rank this as one of the most entertaining, if not THE most entertaining silent movie short subjects I have ever watched....at least to this point. I still have more to see.

This very funny short comedy is an excellent example of Keaton's amazing inventiveness, and it deserves to be one of his best-remembered short features. The first part is especially good, and has to be seen to be appreciated - it's just Buster and a roommate going about their daily routine in a house filled with wacky gadgets and all kinds of unexpected features. There's a lot of great material, much more than you can catch all at once. It would be hard for the rest of it to live up to the first part, but it is pretty good, too - lots of slapstick and chases, plus the actual "Scarecrow" scene. This one is a bit more piecemeal than most of his comedies, but all of the material is very good. Most fans of silent comedies will really enjoy this movie.

Buster Keaton was one of the greatest motion picture performers in the history of motion pictures.

One reason was his athleticism, allowing him to do hilarious stunts, and his timing, as exemplified in "The General," and his dead-pan face that still portrayed an emotion.

In this short film, he uses all of those skills and abilities and still gets upstaged by Luke the Dog for much of the movie.

His female co-star is as cute as anyone could be, and we could only wish she had been around even longer.

Al St. John, later known as "Fuzzy," is here, uncredited, very briefly, and a "pastor" is not given his real name even here at IMDb, which is quite unusual.

Buster Keaton was always great, and sometimes, in fact often in his talkies, was greater than his script.

Here, he was star, co-director and co-writer, and everything came together very well.

I saw this in a TCM Sunday Night Silent, and am grateful to that network, which has, I'm sad to say, deteriorated in quality in recent months, showing an awful lot of very non-classic movies. TCM begins to redeem itself, though, with such films as "The Scarecrow." I recommend "The Scarecrow," and hope you get to see it next time it plays.