Frigo l'esquimau

Though this film includes some nice gags and cartoonish action like all the rest Buster Keaton's films, but 'The Frozen North' is more notable for Buster playing a bad guy. At the beginning of the movie we see Buster emerge from Subay Exit in the middle of the snowy fields of Alaska. Then he proceeds to rob a gambling house, shooting a couple because he mistakes the woman to be his wife, and pursues to chase the beautiful married woman next door.

'The Frozen North' was meant to be mockery of western of that era, especially those of William S. Hart, very popular movie star who didn't like Keaton's take of his characters. Keaton also briefly parodies Erich von Stroheim's womanizing character from 'Foolish Wives'.

As this film is not the funniest or best work of Keaton, it's still fun enough to see. Especially if you are early silent cinema aficionado.

I can imagine André Breton, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, Man Ray, Luis Buñuel, and Salvador Dali enjoying this Keaton short. A subway station in the frozen north, an attempted holdup of a gambling hall (a gag that only makes sense in the context of a film), the radiator of a sled overheating, golf clubs, a keep off the grass sign sticking up through the snow, etc.

The surrealist movement was influenced by the theories of Sigmund Freud and free association and his interpretation of dreams. Considering that The Surrealist Manifesto wasn't written until 1924, so it's very possible that this could have influenced the European surrealists.

I realize that this may seem like a lot of extra information, but having some knowledge of surrealism helps make this Keaton short more understandable and enjoyable. Even though this might seem disjointed, there is some logic behind all of this. If you don't believe me, just ask your analyst...

I saw the Kino Video transfer of this which came with an introduction that explained that it was incomplete and that most of it is pretty much destroyed. So I didn't really get the whole short, but what I did get I shall comment on.

The plot, as it were, is hard to connect because of the missing pieces, but in general it involves Keaton as a very different character than most of his films: this time, as a daringly evil but tragically incompetent ... somebody... that goes around shooting people and chasing women when he's not falling through snow and into frozen lakes. It's quite darker and drier than most of his stuff, as the concrete-faced Keaton goes along shooting and killing person after person... definitely not his usual stuff.

I liked the parodies and take-offs he did in this. It was quite funny, the little pokes at melodrama from Hart's work and so on. However, I'd still like to see a complete copy so that I could get an idea on how this movie flows.

--PolarisDiB

I like this movie, even if it isn't one of his best. We liked 'Bad' Buster simply because it went against the grain. It has lots of clever ideas and tons of references to the movies of the day, the scene where a tear trickles melodramatically down his cheek is a dig at William S Hart,a western actor who always seemed to have a scene where he cried, Hart didn't find the joke funny even if the audiences of the day did. If you are into silent movies then this film will hit it's mark, but, it's enjoyable anyway.

Buster Keaton tackles the rare villainous role, a thoroughly rotten outlaw, in this strange, ice-crusted sorta-western. After emerging from "the end of the subway line" in the frosty tundra of deep Alaska, Keaton gets right to robbing casinos, firing guns at the backs of strangers and making passes at a neighbor's wife... all crimes of convenience that don't go according to plan, but they're still pretty dark acts. There's barely any narrative to speak of, either, just a few clips of Keaton running through the snow to bridge the divergent scenes and a bland, overused climactic jape.

The Frozen North is disorganized to the max; scattered and unfocused like a grab bag of unrefined ideas. Perhaps understandably so, as Keaton's head wasn't really in the game during production. At the time, his friend and former partner, Fatty Arbuckle, was being judged in the press and blacklisted ahead of a much-publicized manslaughter trial and Buster took the about-face of many industry acquaintances very personally. That almost assuredly led to the film's angrier tone and less-focused production. The Frozen North is also, evidently, loaded with topical humor that's utterly lost on most sets of modern eyes, including my own. The despicable cowboy Keaton plays, a selfish scoundrel, was understood at the time as a send-up of William S. Hart, star of many such pictures, who was a vocal critic of Arbuckle's despite never crossing his path. In that context, the film takes on a new light. I'd still consider it one of Buster's worst, both for the structural disarray and the hopelessly dour spirit, but at least I can understand his reasoning.