The camera pulls back and we see that he is looking through a gate to the woman he loves who tells him that she will not marry him until he becomes a business man. If laughter is, indeed, the best medicine, then I should be better by the morning. The movie opens with Buster standing in front of some bars appearing to be in jail. Even an aching throat can't dampen the chuckles in this excellent comedy short. Also watch out for Keaton regular Joe Roberts as the Police Chief, and recurring co-star Virginia Fox in a disappointingly brief role as our hero's love interest. Also incredible is the performer's physical dexterity, as he flips back and forth over a tall ladder balanced precariously on either side of a fence. Here, Keaton really earns his title as the "Great Stone Face." The chaos and confusion of the pursuit is amusing enough, but even more so is Keaton's extraordinary lack of facial expression – he just runs, staring blankly ahead, like a man who expects his problems to dissipate as soon as he wakes up. Keaton loved ending his film's with an overblown chase sequence, whether it be the stampeding cattle in 'Go West (1925)' or the stampeding women in 'Seven Chances (1925).' In 'Cops,' our hero is pursued by hundreds of uniformed policemen, swinging batons and tripping over themselves. First, he is bamboozled into purchasing another family's furniture (by Steve Murphy, the pickpocket in Chaplin's 'The Circus (1928)'), and then gets caught up in a police parade, where, ever a victim of circumstance, he is wrongly accused of performing an act of terrorism. After convincing himself to become a businessman, Keaton's Young Man goes on to show that he has the worst luck in the world. 'Cops (1922)' is generally typical of the comedian's two-reelers of the early 1920s, though with a lesser emphasis on the ingenious gadgets exhibited in 'One Week (1920)' and 'The High Sign (1921).' The film opens with Keaton apparently looking through prison bars at his sweetheart, until a clarifying shot reveals that it is merely the girl's front gate. The reason for ending one shot and going to another should feel organically necessary.Lying in bed with a sore throat, I needed some cheering up. The way I look at it, every cut is a manifest expression of failure, unless it is an essential choice. Instead, shots often seem chosen just to "mix it up" - or (just as bad) simply to supply the next piece of dialog. The filmmakers may have their reasons for cutting (to piece together a performance, say), but it's not necessarily apparent to the audience. Random bits flying out of the cinematic woodchipper don't do it for me. And it explains why so many of the movies I see today strike me as feeble desecrations of the values I treasure most in The Movies. The happening must happen, be photographed intact, then be related by cutting to other happenings." As Walter Kerr wrote: "It was Keaton's notion that cutting, valuable as it was in a thousand ways, must not replace the recording function of the camera, must not create the happening. I'm reminded that much of what I consider to be bad editing in today's movies is stuff that violates the Keaton Code of respecting the integrity of the image, and the aesthetic intelligence of the audience. Watch "Cops" (it's on YouTube, though the quality is terrible, and on the Kino DVD with " The General") before or after you watch Moser's wonderful piece, to see how it plays.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |