Buster s'en va-t'en guerre

"Doughboys" is a really quirky 1930 movie made by Buster Keaton at MGM — his fourth film for them and his second talkie. As the title implies, it's about World War I — or "The Great War," as World War I was usually referred to before there was a World War II — and Keaton drew on his own experiences for some of its story even though other writers (Al Boasberg — whom he'd worked with before on the 1926 silent classic "The General" — Richard Schayer and Sidney Lazarus) got the credit. Keaton plays one of his usual spoiled rich-kid characters, Elmer Julius Stuyvesant II, who's angrily turned down by the woman of his dreams, Mary (Sally Eilers), who indignantly tells him off when he asks her for a date because "you Rolls-Royces think you can have anything." Then the U.S. gets involved in the war and Elmer finds himself suddenly losing his chauffeur because the man has run off and enlisted. Keaton's manservant/bodyguard/factotum/whatever, Gustave (Arnold Korff), suggests that he contact an employment agency to hire another — an immediate necessity because neither Elmer nor Gustave know how to drive. (The moment we hear Gustave speaking with a pretty thick German accent we know the screenwriters are making a deposit into the Cliché Bank which they will later withdraw — and they do.) Only what used to be an employment agency specializing in chauffeurs is now the recruiting office for the U.S. Army — the sign explaining its change of identity has fallen off and we don't realize this until Gustave picks it up while Elmer is already inside — and Elmer, in a gag Abbott and Costello repeated in their sensationally successful service comedy "Buck Privates" 11 years later, finds himself mistakenly having enlisted. Elmer and a few other unpromising-looking recruits, including Nescopeck (Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards), find themselves under the ultra-domineering leadership of drill sergeant Edward Brophy (he's actually called "Sgt. Brophy" in the dialogue), who'd already acted with Keaton as the other man trapped in the changing room at the beach resort in "The Cameraman" (and his training with Keaton stood him in good stead years later when he appeared in "Swing Parade of 1946" with the Three Stooges and joined so heavily in their slapstick he virtually became a Fourth Stooge). Brophy's performance here is so intense and mean he's one of the three most sadistic drill sergeants ever put on screen, alongside Frank Sutton's Sergeant Carter in the 1960's TV show "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C." and R. Lee Ermey in Stanley Kubrick's 1987 Viet Nam war film "Full Metal Jacket." "Doughboys" also contains a romantic triangle, as Mary has an on-again off-again attraction to Elmer while Sgt. Brophy has appointed himself her boyfriend — even though she finds him as appalling as we do — and threatens any other man who approaches her with bodily harm. About midway through the film the principals actually ship out to the combat zone in France — and the film becomes a grim slog through the gritty realities of combat.

What's fascinating about "Doughboys" is that instead of mixing comedy and drama the way one would have expected from a Keaton film (especially if one came to this movie with the expectation, "Cool! He's going to do to World War I what he did to the Civil War in 'The General'!"), it's really a dramatic film and the funny scenes seem more like comic relief than the main event, at least partly because it lacks musical underscoring, though in all other respects — fluidity of camera movement, variety of angles and naturalistic delivery of dialogue instead of all that damnable … pausing … afflicting all too many early sound films — technically it looks more like a movie from 1935 than 1930. Indeed, it's a surprisingly grim movie for something whose star's reputation is as a comedian; only the great scene in which the men of "K" Company put on an amateur show in France (that gets broken up when a German plane bombs the theatre where they're performing) and Buster Keaton does drag and plays the partner of an apache dancer is actually laugh-out-loud funny. Keaton based much of the movie on his own experiences in the war; he was drafted in 1918 and went through basic training but the war was over by the time his unit arrived in France, and so he spent much of his time drilling and participating in amateur theatricals, in some of which he donned drag as his character does in the movie. (Busby Berkeley also got drafted into World War I but arrived in France too late to actually fight; instead he and his company drilled, drilled, and drilled again, and his biographers agree that it was this constant drilling that led him, as a Broadway and Hollywood choreographer, to manipulate his dancers in militaristic formations.) "Doughboys" is a film of individual scenes rather than a well-constructed story (another aspect, besides the war setting and the crazy drill sergeant, it shares with Full Metal Jacket), and just when it seems Keaton and his writers can't come up with a happy ending, a deus ex machina arrives in the form of the war suddenly ending. It's a fascinating movie that isn't really funny enough to fit comfortably into the Keaton canon but it's also considerably better than any of his other MGM talkies, and for virtually the last time Keaton was able to make a starring feature that reflected his surprisingly dark vision of the world. "Doughboys" is a movie that sometimes seems decades ahead of his time, and it could be remade today with only minimal updating. Certainly there are few films like it, even though the darkness and grimness through much of its running time is hardly what one expects from a movie featuring one of the greatest comedians of all time.

After "Free and Easy", I was seriously starting to wonder if I could bear to stick out the rest of Buster Keaton's MGM talkies. But in fact I not only managed to tolerate this; I actually enjoyed it.

"Doughboys" is never going to be anybody's classic, but it's a perfectly decent little picture. The quality of the contents is not great, but pretty consistent; its best moments never quite reach the heights of the best of "Three Ages" or "Spite Marriage", let alone, say, "Steamboat Bill, Jr"... but quite frankly, its worst moments are actually better than the more tedious sections of the former two movies. MGM's script department have, apparently, finally got their act together, and the dialogue is far more fluid -- and funnier -- than the laboured humour of "Free and Easy". Such a benchmark scarcely implies, of course, that the scenes necessarily sparkle in any way, but they're entertaining and seldom outstay their welcome. The cardinal virtue of this film in comparison with its predecessor is that it's rarely an embarrassment to watch.

Keaton himself appears much happier with his material here, and -- again unlike "Free and Easy" -- "Doughboys" clearly bears his stamp. This may be a talkie, but it's recognisably a Buster Keaton film, and allegedly one with autobiographical elements, as when he asks for a smaller pair of Army boots! We see the welcome return of Buster's trademark range of deadpan reactions, and revisit a couple of silent-era gags -- funnier when seen for the first time, but still old friends. The balance of visual versus verbal humour is much more even overall in this film, and it's better for it.

Sadly, given the age-distorted soundtrack of the print one problem this non-American viewer faced was considerable difficulty with some of the actors' accents. Buster himself is fine, but there were a couple of scenes -- including, unfortunately, the finale -- where I completely failed to understand what had just happened because a vital line was delivered in what appeared to be thick dialect.

My other principal dialogue issue is that (apparently gratuitous) line about Buster's being twenty-three, when he is quite evidently ten years older! Since the character is represented at both start and end of the film as being in a fairly senior position in the firm, and since his father and namesake is apparently old enough to have retired, I simply can't see any script logic in wrong-footing the audience in this way.

"Doughboys" doesn't have anything like the inventiveness or laugh quotient of Keaton's own early short films, or the depth of his great silent features, but there's nothing too much wrong with it bar a few mildly tedious stretches. An inoffensive lightweight comedy that no-one -- studio included -- need be ashamed of; as an apprenticeship in the technique of talkie humour this is fine, and it's nice to see places where Keaton is clearly enjoying himself again. Personally, I'd rather watch this than, say, "The Love Nest": at any rate it really doesn't deserve Leonard Maltin's dismissal as "one of Buster's worst films".

This film seems like no one was sure of what to do now that they had to include sound. Keaton shares a number of scenes with Cliff Richards, an odd talent who most reminds me of Charlie McCarthy. Much of the dialog is spoken by the drill Sergent as he screams at Keaton. Keaton's gags are reduced to the sort that would have been throw-aways in his silent films. Many of the pratfalls are forced as you can see Keaton set himself up for another mishap. The entire cast seems unrehearsed. Some of the film is so oddly edited that I wonder if the print we have now was chopped up after the initial release. Compare this film with "Spite Marriage" from a year before and you'll wonder too how the same crew could have made both films. Not recommendable.

I've read some terrible things about «Doughboys" (1930) , Buster Keaton's second talkie, over the years, but it's not really all that bad; mind you, it's not all that great, either. It is probably the archetypal "wrongly-enlisted-in-the-army" comedy, which has enough entries to make up an entire sub-genre. Keaton is a master of deadpan comedy, and his voice perfectly matches his demeanor. The film has occasional funny gags, but not enough to sustain its feature length. The script, if it can be called that, is very weak, but there are some impressive pyrotechnics, this being an MGM production. There is also a most bizarre "army revue" song-and dance show where the entire troupe, including Buster and apart from one girl, are men in drag (!). ** out of 4.

Buster's talkie years get a bad rap but this one is solid. It's fascinating to watch Buster's take on WWI, especially now that I know he actually was a WWI veteran and saw combat. There's some genuine movie magic here. If you're a Buster fan, it's worth a watch.