Customer Reviews

Sidewalks of New York [VHS]

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I do recommend seeing this film. It's an entertaining, rather old-fashioned early talkie movie that also has Buster Keaton in it. No, it's not a good "Keaton Film". In fact it is not a Keaton film at all in the sense that we Keaton fans would like to have it; but as a minor gangster/dead-end-kids comedy-drama with a familiar face, it's pretty good. It has a big cast, good production values, engaging characters (I don't mind stereotypes if they're innocent), it mostly rolls along pretty well, it's not a long movie, and guess what? One of the characters is played by Buster Keaton.

If you just consider Keaton to be a "working actor" at this time in his career, which he was, he thus is an actor lucky to have a job in a big (and commercially successful!) movie like this. These were depression years, after all... Artistically, the question becomes whether or not Keaton is miscast. But, who else could have played this part so effectively? You would need someone who can play rich-but-funny, weak-to-strong. With some re-writing, maybe Eddie Cantor or Joe E. Brown? Or my favorite imagining is young Cary Grant. But then, if we're imagining a little re-writing this could have been a stronger vehicle for Keaton. Harold Lloyd could have done it, but he was doing perfectly well diminishing his character on his own at this time.

Of course there are mistakes, missed opportunities and some poor scripting. (Have you seen any good movies lately? I mean good NEW movies? Talk about disappointing!)

One curious element of the script is that Keaton claims to have been an orphan ("Ever since I was born."). Did he just lie? If the script were to show it to be true (he was adopted?) then that could help explain why his speech isn't perfect, and (more re-writing) why he is able to transform (regress?) to a physically-capable kind of guy in a fight. More poor scripting: he is not truly interested in the kids. "Clifford" says it directly to his sister, right in front of Keaton, suggestively: "He ain't doin' it for me. He's tryin' to get in solid with you." Wow, that's brutal... and apparently true. Keaton is not shown to have a genuine concern for the kids, reducing my sympathy for Keaton's character.

On the other hand, notice he uses the same wrestling moves on Butch in the fight at the end of the film, as the kid named Baloney used on Keaton in the wrestling scene near the beginning? Keaton sees Baloney do this again later, and then uses it himself, showing a logical development of his skill. There's some good symmetry here, it's just not strongly-enough filmed to be really noticeable. I guess Jules White was still learning how to direct.

Some of the problems are not purely by MGM. For my comfort, Keaton's love-struck youth character could have gone away as early as 1921, after "Hard Luck". In this movie, upon his first meeting with Anita Page (after she slugs him): how much better the scene would have played if instead of saying "Oh, do you believe in love at first sight?" (UGH!!!) the camera had simply rested on his face for a moment (and then have Keaton later mention to Edwards how 'struck' he was with that beautiful strong woman).

Many decry the MGM strategy of "stupid is funny", but Keaton's accident-prone character was part of his silent-film personae, and it shows up again in later Red Skelton movies, which Keaton had a lot to do with, and in Keaton's own TV show (where he reprises the cut-the-duck routine). So, he's probably as much to blame as MGM is for this unfortunate comic-character device. Homer Harmon might have been the same character even if the script were written by Keaton.

A few scenes go on a little too long and are not as funny as they might have been; some of dialogue could have been trimmed down, and some scenes with Keaton not doing much would have worked better at a slightly faster speed (like carving the duck). But the movie has many positives: Buster looks alert and in good health to me. Except for a couple of dumb lines, which may have been intentionally silly, I did not have a big problem accepting his scripted speech, nor did his middle-class accent bother me. There is a fair amount of action right from the start, and after a funny courtroom scene that had me chuckling, the gag with the flower made me laugh out loud (even tho I was watching alone). Keaton shows resourcefulness in his way of "persuading" the kids to visit his gym, and I was happy to see him unafraid to assertively kiss the girl. The boxing scene has a funny ending, he does good pratfalls throughout the movie, and gets in some particularly good leaping, jumping and tumbling in the finale.

The image on the new Warner "On Demand" DVD lacks detail in the darks, but is otherwise excellent, generally clean and clear if a little soft in some of the long shots. The sound is clear and intelligible, better than the "Doughboys" DVD. Of course you cannot play this in your computer or computerized movie-system due to Warner's anti-rip copy protection, but it will play just fine in a Blu-Ray or regular DVD player.

So: four stars for the DVD quality, three stars for the movie itself, and since I can't combine the two and do a 3-1/2 star rating, I'll go with four. It's not a true "Buster Keaton Film", and you might not want to watch it twice (although I have), but for a lazy Sunday afternoon it's a pretty good old-time movie WITH Buster Keaton in it, just needing a little editing to make it a bit tighter. If you could put it on Final Cut, I bet you could do it yourself.

Buster plays Homer Harmon, a wealthy landlord of tenement buildings in a poor Irish neighborhood of New York City. He falls madly in love with the older sister of a teenage delinquent, whose gang is defacing his property. In order to win favor with the sister, Buster builds a gym for these unappreciative brats. The gang uses dialogue like "yer yella", "you big lug", "you mugs" - sort of like pre-Dead End Kids, but not as serious.

One of the best scenes in the film is where Buster gets beat up a lot while trying to teach the youngsters wrestling and boxing, something his character knows nothing about, and borrows techniques he used in the 1926 silent "Battling Butler". His partners include his co-star Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards (who growls at him), and what is probably a 1931 junior wrestling champ hired for this film, a guy named Baloney (who really shows him a thing or two).

Another good scene is where Buster and Ike put on a show to raise money for the neighborhood. Bus dresses up like a gypsy girl and flirts with Ike, who's playing the part of a Russian Cossack. Later, he appears in drag again when he's mistaken for a crook named the Blonde Bandit and appears in a dress that struck me as looking like it was borrowed from Joan Crawford's dressing room.

Buster disliked "Sidewalks of New York" the most out of all the features he made at MGM between 1928-33, but it's really not that bad. The pacing moves along without dull moments, and it made a lot of money at the box office, probably because the subject matter attracted kids. But it wasn't up to his standard of quality entertainment (he knew he could do better).

"Sidewalks of New York" (1931) was Buster Keaton's biggest box-office hit, even though the comic genius detested the MGM production. Despite his lack of creative control, Keaton manages some brilliant moments in this early talkie - a precursor to the hijinks of the Dead End Kids. Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards makes an ideal sidekick for the Great Stone Face. "Sidewalks of New York" certainly doesn't compare to Keaton's silent masterpieces, but it's less painful than the MGM disasters of "Free and Easy" and "The Passionate Plumber."

Of the seven talking pictures Buster Keaton did at MGM, this has got to be the worst. It was Keaton's fourth talking picture, released in the fall of 1931. Buster plays a millionaire who falls in love with Anita Page's character. To be close to her he builds a gymnasium for the rowdy youngsters in the neighborhood, one of whom is her brother.

Keaton had been lured to MGM with promises of plum movie scripts, and this is what all of those promises came to. All of Keaton's talkies largely cast him as a bumbler rather than the resourceful fellow he cast himself as during his years as an independent filmmaker, but some of them worked to some degree in part because of the artful hand of veteran comedy director Edward Sedgwick. This time, Sedgwick was busy and MGM assigned Jules White and Zion Myers to the task of directing. The hitch here is that the pair were the directors of MGM's successful all canine Dogville Comedy shorts, otherwise known as "The Barkies". If you've seen "The Dogway Melody" short on the Broadway Melody of 1929 DVD, you've sampled their work. Their reward was to be moved up from dogs to people, starting with Buster Keaton. Keaton couldn't help but be insulted, and it's no wonder he began to drink quite heavily during this period.

Oddly enough this picture was a success at the time it was released. Today it seems largely unwatchable. One interesting thing to note in this film is how Jules White relied on physical comedy of the fast and violent variety. This served him well as head of the Columbia shorts department where he worked from 1934 until 1958, and where he directed the studio's busiest comedy team, The Three Stooges. In fact, there is one scene in this film that is almost identical to the early Stooge short "Disorder in the Court". However, this is just not Buster's style.

I disagree with one of the other reviewers when comparing this to "The Passionate Plumber". I actually think that film is considerably superior to this one. There Keaton is not the total bumbler he is in this film, but instead is quite the inventive problem solver throughout. Warner Home Video has released the first three of Keaton's MGM films in Buster Keaton Collection (The Cameraman / Spite Marriage / Free & Easy). I wish Warner Home Video would give us official DVD releases of the other six Keaton MGM films including this one. One thing that Laughsmith's Industrial Strength Keaton proved was that even obscure Buster when handled with care, digitally restored, and with interesting commentary can be good Buster and interesting entertainment.