Customer Reviews

Sherlock Jr & Our Hospitality [VHS]

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am a Buster Keaton fan, even though I had only seen a few of his films until now. My favorite remains "The General" which is a great Civil War adventure with a lot of laughs, too. This Kino DVD, a combo of Sherlock Jr and Our Hospitality, is hilarious! Our Hospitality is the first on the DVD and tells the tale of Buster Keaton's woes when he wanders into an old blood feud between families and spends half the film blissfully unaware that he is a walking bullseye. The film is set in the 1830s and has some hilarious scenes, such as the early railroad trip back to the old homestead (some of the jokes in this part are a prelude to The General) and some great stunt work (Keaton on the edge of a REAL waterfall). And Keaton does all his own stunts, it's amazing he didn't hurt himself more often!

Sherlock Jr. is probably one of Keaton's more famous works, but to be honest, I liked the first movie on the DVD more. This one is funny, too, but it's kinda scattered, plot-wise. Keaton plays a movie projectionist who enters his movie (in a dream), solves the mystery, and saves the girl. It's really an excuse for some great special effects (back in those days, at least!). I guess some things never change (I wonder if Sherlock Jr. was a summer film...) but this film is still really really funny. Back to back, these films are funnier and more original than almost anything you'd see in theaters today.

Just a few words about the DVD itself - these films are 70+ years old, so they aren't in perfect condition. Our Hospitality has scratches and dust. The source print is ok but looks its age. At least the image is clear with good contrast, unlike a lot of silent films which look all black with patches of white. Sherlock Jr's print source is great! It almost looks new and has great contrast. Plus, the best part is the soundtrack. The Sherlock Jr soundtrack is really jazzy with bits of James Bond/Batman/saxophone music; it doesn't have the typical ragtime piano or organ music you usually hear and it really makes the movie sound fantastic (that's something you don't hear much about silent films...) Too bad there are not extras on the DVD, except for chapter search. I would have liked to see a Keaton biography or filmography, especially since this DVD is a little pricey.

Still, a great DVD, and a must for Buster Keaton fans! Get the General, too! Or any of the Chaplin feature films (get them from Image, which has access to the Chaplin vaults and has the best looking films as a result).

Keaton's "Sherlock Jr." One of the genuine legends of film history. While it's not as tragic as Erich von Stroheim's "Greed," "Sherlock Jr." is an experience that simply must be seen to be believed. Buster Keaton's mastery of physical comedy reached its zenith with this exercise in surrealism that is pure joy from beginning to end. It's only forty minutes long and there's not much of a plot to it -- Keaton plays a projectionist at a movie theater who wants to be a detective, but stumbles at his first attempt to solve a crime. He falls asleep in the movie theater, and his dream-self walks into the movie and takes part in an comedy adventure consisting of stuntwork so incredible, it made my jaw drop when I saw it for the first time. Most of the stunts here are filmed live, and Keaton uses masterful editing to bring them all together. One scene here, where he falls from a water tower onto a railroad track, actually broke his neck in real life -- but he didn't even realize it until a physical examination several years later!

I don't have too much to add re: the movies themselves, because previous reviewers have covered that territory pretty well. The prints are reasonably good (Sherlock Jr. struck my as *very* clean) and the speed was also pretty good, although I could have used the framespeed maybe just a shade slower here and there, but that's usual for films of this era because they were hand-cranked and usually a tad slower than 24 frames/sec.

I'm a pianist who has played silents for years, first at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and a few years later at the American Museum of the Moving Image. I found the score of Sherlock, Jr. totally distracting and bizarre. Movie scores are best treated like makeup: if you notice it's there its just *too much*. With a frenetic movie like Sherlock Jr. it's simply disasterous to shift music to attempt to make clever commentaries on each scene...the James Bond reference made me groan, and the blues guitar whenever a wooden shack appears in the scene is simply childish and derivative. I think if you're into avant-garde treatment of Buster Keaton movies, I think Bill Frissell did a much better job. Anyway different strokes I suppose, but the Club Foot orchestra turned a happy, brilliant movie into a narsisistic exercise in disconcertive disruptive twaddle.

So I'd recommend turning the sound down for Sherlock Jr. and maybe just putting on of the the Paragon Ragtime albums or Dick Hyman...the movie will be tons more fun that way.

"Sherlock Jr." is, in addition to hilarious and breathtaking, a remarkable study in how people see film and what illusions exist in the medium. Keaton would never admit it, but this is revoluationary modernism. Even if it isn't, the awe-inspiring stunts and gags are more than enough.

"Our Hospitality" is also a masterpiece, but is more influential for its use of classical narrative in a slapstick comedy. Note the wonderful detail in the sets and an exact replica of Stephenson's "The Rocket," an insane thin little train built in 1829, one year before the film takes place. Detail like that helps to convince us that the gags are real, not merely film effects.

Good plot synopsi can be found elsewhere on this page, so I won't include any.

In the first feature of this DVD, "Our Hospitality" (1923), Keaton shows us a period in American history rarely seen in the movies. The movie starts in 1810 when Keaton's character is a baby and leaps to 1830 when he's 21. Keaton accurately shows us the period of the 1830s by riding a pedalless bicycle, showing us the intersection of Broadway and 42nd Street, which turns out to be the eye-popping rurality of his aunt's cottage between 2 dirt roads, and travels from New York to the South on the Stephenson Rocket, an early train which looks like a string of stage coaches on railroad tracks. Keaton has been informed that he's to claim his family's estate in the South, and much of the movie is shown how traveling by train in this period was so cumbersome. Keaton throws in a lot of gags about this such as the engineer (played by his real father Joe) moving the train tracks with his bare hands in order to get the train past a stubborn jackass, and he illustrates the relative speed of the train by showing a dog outrunning it. The basic plot of the film is that Keaton meets a girl (played by his real life wife Natalie) on the train who turns out to be the daughter of a family in which his own has been feuding with for generations. When Keaton gets to his destination in the South, he finds that the estate he envisioned to be a pretty antebellum mansion turns out to be a worthless dump. However, he stays in town because he has been invited by the girl on the train to have supper with her family. When her brothers and father find out who he is, they spend the rest of the movie trying to execute him with their authentically portrayed pistols. This movie includes the most amazing stunt of Keaton's entire film career. He must save the girl from plunging to the bottom of a waterfall. He ties himself to a rope and swings over the falls, catching her as she's going down. Keaton injested so much water from this scene that he had to have his stomach pumped.

The second feature is "Sherlock Jr." (1924), one of Keaton's all-time classics. Keaton plays a shmoe film projectionist who's treated disrespectfully by his boss and the rival for the girl he's in love with. After his rival arranges to have him accused of stealing her dad's watch (again played by Keaton's real life father Joe), he dreams he's a brilliant, flawless detective, and it's in this sequence that we get some of the most classic images of Keaton's career, in particular with Keaton speeding through the streets of L.A. on the handlebars of a motorcycle (you can see Harley printed on the side of it), oblivious of the fact that it has no driver (who fell off after driving through a dip). It also features more Keaton train-related gags. There's a fun scene where Keaton, still sitting on the riderless motorcycle, narrowly misses a train and also gets hit on top of a train by a splurge of water from a water tower spout. Years later, Keaton discovered that he'd broken his neck while filming this scene. Only one thing annoyed me about this film, and it had nothing to do with Keaton. Someone slipped in a 90's-composed film score that's totally out of place accompanying this movie. We get to hear a mishmash of '60s Las Vegas lounge, Hawaiian, southern blues, striptease, '40s swing bands, and '60s beach party that ends with a few notes of the James Bond theme. The music is actually good, but it doesn't belong here. My advice is to buy this DVD if you admire Keaton, but turn the volume down to zero when "Sherlock Jr." comes on.

These were two of the most amazing and creative films I have seen in months. Buster Keaton wrote, directed, acted, and did all his own stunts in these two films. He even did stunts for a lot of the other actors in these films too.

"Our hospitality" is the story of a feud between two families that reaches a crisis point when Keaton falls in love with a daughter in the other family. In "Sherlock Jr." Keaton plays an aspiring detective and movie projectionist who dreams that he is a famous and skilled detective. Not only are these two films engaging, well made, and interesting, they are funny!! I go weeks sometimes without laughing at a sitcom or a movie that is supposed to be a comedy. I found myself laughing out loud numerous times during this film.

There are some classic scenes that just stand out when you watch these movies. The whole "floating down the river" scene at the end of "Our Hospitality" is jaw-dropping. These have got to be some of the most dangerous stunts ever attempted. In "Sherlock Jr." there is a pool game where every ball on the table is bounced around except for one which is miraculously untouched, there is the harrowing motorcycle ride, there is the escape from the gangsters, I could go on an on.

These films are like live action Bugs Bunny cartoon. There were several occasions where as I was watching these movies, trying to anticipate what was going to happen next I said to myself, "No way. He's not really going to do that. That's not even possible. No sane man would attempt a stunt like that." And yet...he does.

There are about 4 or 5 scenes from both of these films which are completely seared into my brain. That isn't an easy thing to do. Most films don't have one memorable scene, and to have a single film with 5 or 6 of these scenes is nothing short of amazing.

They just don't make filmmakers like Buster Keaton anymore. I wish I knew where his creativity came from. If directors today could channel even a fraction of the skill that Keaton exhibited, cinema would be an amazing and wonderful place.

Two of Buster Keaton's best feature films are showcased on this cassette, in beautiful video trasfers. OUR HOSPITALITY is Buster's take on the Hatfield and McCoy feud (the families here are called Canfield and McKay). Perhaps even more impressive than the very impressive comedy are the production itself: the sets, costumes, and props seem more authentic than those for most dramas set in the mid-1800's. This attention to detail truly enhances the comedy. SHERLOCK, JR. gets my vote as Buster's best feature. A wild film that parodies the detective films of the era, SHERLOCK, JR. contains some eye-popping effects that were done live on the set (the JURASSIC PARK age of special effects being some 70 years off). Fortunately for Keaton, he was his own best special effect. The film has been influential to modern film makers: Woody Allen stated that THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO was inspired by SHERLOCK, JR., and Arnold Schwarzenegger's THE LAST ACTION HERO is a reworking of SHERLOCK, JR.'s basic plotline.

If you can only pick up one Keaton tape, this is the one. Our Hospitality and Sherlock Jr. were his 3rd and 4th features and show him at his peak in two very different directions: Our Hospitality is a well-plotted Hatfield-and-McCoys yarn that climaxes with a dazzling waterfall stunt, while Sherlock Jr. is a work of dizzying surrealism in which Buster plays a projectionist who walks into his own film (and the way he's buffeted from shot to shot is just the beginning of the mindbending adventures that will follow). OH shows him as one of the best comics of his time; SJ shows him not only ahead of his time but ours.

It's a real shame Buster couldn't make the transition in the advent of sound the way his contemporary, the late, great Charles Chaplin did but just like Chaplin, Keaton was an excellent exponent of the art of slapstick comedy. Both were great acrobats and athletes and really great actors. It struck me while I was watching this dvd how much better all the actors were in those days; I suppose without the aid of sound, these guys had to convince the audience solely based on their acting skills. To put it another way, Keanu Reeves would fall flat on his face if he had to ply his trade in those days. Alternatively, Jackie Chan would have done very well; he, just like Keaton and Chaplin did, does most if not all of his own stunts and suffered sometimes serious injuries for his art.

The two episodes here though probably represent the best of Keaton's work with Sherlock Jr shading it just a little as the better of the two. While "Our Hospitality" is hilarious and the longer episode, Sherlock Jr has a lot of truly memorable and creative elements one of which has been heavily borrowed and made into the main premise of the not-too-long-ago Schwarzenegger movie, "Last Action Hero" where Keaton literally jumps into the scene of a movie within a movie albeit in his dreams. Keaton's acting on both these episodes is also brilliant and for one grown up on "talkies" all my life, I still found that I could enjoy these silent movies.

The video restoration work is commendable given what must have been the state of the original master tapes. I do however have a beef with the misleading information on the cover: "Digitally Mastered from Archival Prints with ORIGINAL MUSICAL SCORES." The answer to this ambiguous statement is that ORIGINAL here means newly composed and recorded and NOT the original scores as was played in the movie houses of the day. I guess in hindsight it should have been obvious to me as in those days, it was really just the video and some guy playing live on the piano at the movie house and so it would have been unlikely that any sound recording would have been available but they could have at least attempted to stay true to the spirit of the sound of that day. Instead, although the sound quality of this modern recording is very good, we get an anachronistic treatment of the score for the "Sherlock Jr." episode with James Bond themes included in the score which threw me off and which I found off-putting to say the least. Not only did the score not fit the video but it was also very loud and distracts one from the important thing which is the acting.

That aside, any student of film, particularly the history and development of comedy, or indeed anyone interested in the work of Buster Keaton and would like a sample of his best work need look no further. Just remember to turn down the volume on the score though.

OUR HOSPITALITY, suggested by the famous Hatfield/McCoy fued, is pleasant enough but somehow doesn't really engage. Still, this being a Keaton movie it has some memorable bits. There's a lovely train ride sequence. And when Keaton is in the house of his beloved & discovers that Southern Hospitality doesn't extend beyond the confines of the family manse he manages some very funny moments. There is a joke involving a horse that is so expertly done it is forever fresh & toward the end of the movie there are some exciting stunts along a river. But the thing here is SHERLOCK JR. This is possibly the most astonishing 45 minutes ever put on film & is Keaton at his best. Ostensibly the movie is about Keaton, who is the projectionist at the local movie house & is reading a teach yourself course in private detection, defending himself against accusations of stealing a watch belonging to his sweetheart's father. But when, in one of the most famous moments in cinema, he dreams himself into the movie he is projecting this movie becomes a fine example of native surrealism. Keaton plays with perceptions of time & reality & pulls off one felicitious invention after another. There is the billiard game that every one copied for the next 50 years. And the escape through a window involving a dress that no one copied because no one could figure out how it was done even though it's all there in front of you from set-up to finish. And, finally, a ride with Keaton on the handlebars of an otherwise unoccupied motorcycle that everyone is still copying. But the original here remains supreme. He builds the suspense then teases us with a pseudo resolution. He allows us time to get & appreciate his joke then builds up again. Again he postpones the end. When the actual payoff does come it's such a zinger that in theatres people stand & cheer. Bravo Buster.