If you need evidence that Buster Keaton was just as much a stuntman as a comedian, look no further than Our Hospitality. In this riff on the Hatfield-McCoy feud, Keaton straddles two separating train cars, flails down a raging river, and performs a climactic swing across the face of a waterfall. It’s all impressive, but plays more like straight-up adventure than the ticklish (and yes physically grueling) comedy Keaton had mostly been known for up until this point. Our Hospitality was an early attempt to merge short-form slapstick with feature-length melodrama, but it’s not quite as seamless as the work of, say, Charlie Chaplin. The movie grindingly sets up what gags there are and takes a frustratingly long time to execute them. More surprisingly, it never gets a fix on Keaton’s Willie McKay, who returns to his childhood home as a young man somewhat unaware of the feud still simmering against his family. Is Willie a straight-up simpleton? A daring hero? (One gag that doesn’t work is his attempt to help an abused wife who ends up punching him.) Is he slyly evading the Canfield brothers who spend much of the movie trying to kill him or blithely escaping their clutches via silly twists of fate? Each scene is played differently, even by Keaton. Looking back at an offhanded early bit in which Willie tries to fit his top hat into a train car (it ends with him choosing Keaton’s signature porkpie hat instead), you wish the entire film had simply chosen to play as farce—in effect, toss that top hat out the window. Directed by Keaton and John G. Blystone, with Keaton’s father, Joe, in a bit part as a train engineer; his wife Natalie Talmadge as the Canfield sister Willie falls for; and his infant son as young Willie in the movie’s intensely dramatic prologue.
(2/25/2022)
