Go West (1925)

 

The latest Buster Keaton movie to be featured on the blog is a rather unusual film for Buster.  Yes, he’s playing his fumbling-but-resourceful little fellow, the film is wildly inventive, and there are some remarkable gags.  So what’s different?  Two words:  Brown Eyes.

 

Brown Eyes is the name of Buster’s costar in this film, one of the first bovine actresses in Hollywood to receive a salary and a screen credit.  That’s right – Brown Eyes is a cow.  Following Horace Greeley’s advice to “go west, young man,” Buster’s character (a hapless chap called Friendless) rides the rails to a ranch where he gets a job as a rather dubious cowboy and makes a fast friend in the form of a certain brown-eyed beauty.  Unfortunately, Brown Eyes’s milk-giving days are behind her, and it’s up to Friendless to save her from the slaughterhouse.

 

For whatever reason, movie-going human beings are inherently more sympathetic to imperiled animals than imperiled people, and so, Go West is infused with a sentimental streak not usually found in Buster’s work.  Some would say that the heartstring-tugging present here feels like Chaplin rather than Buster, but while I agree it’s bit sappier than Buster’s typical fare, it doesn’t feel hugely out of place to me.  His stories aren’t big on sentiment, but some of his characters are, especially when it comes to the girl.  In this case, the girl just happens to be a cow; though the looks he gives Brown Eyes aren’t the lovesick gazes he points at the girls in his movies, they’re every bit as (platonically) affectionate.  On paper, it may actually be funnier to think of Buster running pell-mell and bending over backwards to save the cow he cares for, but in the execution, one can’t help feeling for Brown Eyes.  Watching Friendless’s efforts to rescue her, an “aw” may even escape one’s lips.

 

But enough about that – let’s move on to the comedy.  Buster must’ve had a ball playing around with the Wild West genre, because there are great gags aplenty.  Watching non-country boy Friendless trying to figure out how to milk a cow is hysterical, and everyone should see Buster Keaton struggling with a lasso at least once in their lives.  There’s some nice train humor, a winking reference to Buster’s famous stone face, and of course some clever, fantastically funny problem-solving on display.  I’m especially fond of the way Friendless retrieves his tiny gun from his full-sized holster, as well as his quick fix to spare Brown Eyes from being branded.

 

I mentioned Buster’s stone face, but something that’s really impressed me as I’ve been rewatching these movies is how deceptively expressive he is.  While it’s easy to focus on the deadpan, it’s always clear what his characters are thinking, thanks to subtle shifts in Buster’s facial expression and smart camera work that knows when to highlight it.  With hardly a flicker of movement, he can show surprise, fear, despair, resolve, joy, and a bevy of other emotions.  Just another reason to applaud this terrific filmmaker.

 

Warnings

 

Just lots of slapstick violence.