Edward F. Cline – Sat In Your Lap

The House That Love Built

***This Review Contains Spoilers***

Alongside such films as The High Sign and The Electric House, One Week follows in a line of Buster Keaton shorts which utilise aspects of engineering for comic effect. In the case of One Week, Keaton and his newly married wife (in contrast to the usual Keaton formula in which Keaton doesn’t typically begin a film already having the girl), receive a package from the Portable House Co, with their DIY dwelling inside. With the popularity of Ikea-style, flat-pack, ready-to-assemble furniture in the 21^st century, this concept being expanded to a full-on house is particularly appealing to the contemporary viewer. At the same time, the short displays that 1920’s go-getter attitude, which paired with the romantic, domestic setting of newlyweds constructing and living in their new home, does make One Week feel endearing and sentimental. I do also find Keaton’s stoicism to be just as endearing in itself. His house is furiously rotating in a storm while the couple are soaking wet, yet there is no point complaining; let’s just sit here and wait until it’s over.

Once the newlyweds finish building their dwelling, it ends up looking like a set piece from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari due to sabotage from a jealous love interest. Yet the home is still full of clever, utilitarian innovations such as a retractable section of the wall for easy access, a patio banner which can be removed and double as a ladder, and a conveniently indented foot hole on the roof. Likewise, the two-dimensional presentation of certain shots even resembles a platforming video game. They also manage to throw in a meta, fourth-wall-breaking on-screen representation of censorship when the wife drops a bar of soap out of the tub and waits until someone’s hand is placed over the camera lens so she can lean out and retrieve it.

Keaton’s expertise with messing with the audience’s expectations is in full gear with One Week. In particular, the forced perspective shot near the short’s conclusion in which an incoming train appears as if it’s about to smash into their dwelling, only to narrowly miss (only for moments later does another train actually do just this). Keaton makes it look so easy, yet this ending still takes me by surprise when watching One Week again after several years. It might sound contradictory, but watching a short film like this, you can see all the ways in which the world has changed in over 100 years, yet there are ways in which things remain the same.

Keaton Komedy Klassic

The ‘High Sign’ has to be my favourite Buster Keaton short and it just so happens to be the first independent film Keaton produced, giving birth to his iconic unnamed character. However, Keaton was reportedly disappointed with the short and didn’t release it until the following year, instead making One Week his first solo short. I question why though as I feel the premise of The ‘High Sign’ is one of Keaton’s most inspired and even worthy of being used as the set-up for a feature – it’s true what they say, the artist is often wrong about their own work. The opening prologue of The High Sign states “Our hero came from Nowhere– he wasn’t going Anywhere and got kicked off Somewhere”; and considering his superhuman stunts, Keaton is like an alien who just landed on Earth. This opening prologue reminds me of a statement Roger Ebert made in his review of The General; “[Keaton] seems like a modern visitor to the world of silent clowns”.

The ‘High Sign’ packs in so much gags and material into its 21-minute runtime, chocked full of blink-and-you-miss-it moments in the story of a wannabe gangster who also becomes a bodyguard for the man he is assigned to kill. The gag involving Keaton’s set-up with the dog, the meat and the string (it’s hard to explain) is reminiscent of something Mr. Bean would conjure while the short also features the earliest example I’ve seen in a film of a recurring gag with the high sign itself, a secret signal between the members of a gang known as The Blinking Buzzards. Keaton even messes with the audience’s expectation for comic effect by walking past a banana peel on the ground only to not slip on it. Furthermore, the short’s finale is a real “How did they do that?” sequence. The house with its traps and secret hatches is an astounding piece of set design and when four rooms on duel levels appear in the frame at once in which Keaton jumps back and forth between them, it reminds me of a 2D platform video game. I was laughing, in awe and was even shocked (when the gangster’s neck is closed on the door) all at once. All of this takes place within a nostalgic, Coney Island-like setting (filmed at Venice Pier in Los Angeles) and even features the appearance of a man at the 11 minutes mark who bears quite a resemblance to that other great silent comic, Charlie Chaplin (intentional or not?). I’ll say it now and I’ll say it again; the genius of Buster Keaton will never cease to amaze me.