College

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Details At A Glance

General
Extras
Category Comedy Menu Audio and Animation
Featurette - One Week (18:45)
Featurette - The Blacksmith (18:59)
Rating
Year Released 1927
Running Time 64:48 minutes
RSDL/Flipper No/No
Cast & Crew
Start Up Menu
Region 1,2,3,4,5,6 Director James W Horne
Studio
Distributor
United Artists 
Force Video
Starring Buster Keaton
Florence Turner
Anne Cornwall
Flora Bradley
Harold Goodwin
Snitz Edwards
Sam Crawford
Carl Harbaugh
Case Transparent Amaray
RPI $32.95 Music

 
Video
Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame Full Frame English (Dolby Digital 2.0, 224 Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio No
16x9 Enhancement No
Theatrical Aspect Ratio 1.37:1
Miscellaneous
Macrovision ? Smoking Yes
Subtitles None Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits No

Plot Synopsis

    Every so often, Force Video do us all a great favour and release a Eureka Video DVD of classic comedy from the silent era, and so it was with some glee that I grabbed this latest effort from the brilliant Buster Keaton. The man was a genius as far as comedy was concerned and despite the fact that comedy of the era tended toward the telegraphed (an accusation that unfortunately can still be levelled at American comedy), he never failed to deliver with perfection. We have already seen in Region 4 perhaps the best example of his work in The General, but basically anything he did is worthwhile watching. This is almost quintessential Buster Keaton - and done with such style that you cannot help but laugh. This was the follow-up to The General I believe and Buster Keaton was just happy to do a somewhat more relaxed film than the earlier gem. So, this is a much looser style of film, with the emphasis being on having a bit of fun - The General having been a much more serious style of film. At the time Buster Keaton was at the pinnacle of the heap, the king of the silent film, but the signs were there that things were changing in film and the era of the silent film was drawing to a close.

    Ronald (Buster Keaton) is graduating from high school as the top of his class, but things are tempered by the fact that the love of his life, and most popular girl in school, Mary Haynes (Anne Cornwall) is being wooed by the star student athlete Jeff Brown (Harold Goodwin). After Ronald delivers a valedictorian's address that roundly pans the emphasis on athletic achievement in school rather than academic achievement (with some delightful word plays to boot), Mary tells Ronald that she cannot take him seriously unless he changes his attitude towards sports. With Mary heading off to Clayton College, Ronald wants to follow, but his mother (Florence Turner) does not have the money. He goes anyway, with the aim of working his way through college. He also has the desire to become the typical student-athlete, and thus the fun begins. Not only do we get to see the fun as he tries to come up with the goods in his jobs (the soda fountain clerk job is a gem), but also his attempts to become an athlete - and some of those are absolute crackers. Naturally, as he pursues sporting glory, all in the name of convincing Mary that he is no weakling, his grades drop enormously to the huge disappointment of the Dean (Snitz Edwards). However, the Dean fully understands the power of love and forces the rowing coach (Carl Harbaugh) to make Ronald the coxswain of the rowing eight. Buster Keaton in an eight? You can guess what happens!

    Like so many films of the silent era, the plot is pretty straight-forward and does not amount to all that much. However, when you combine it with the classic comedy style of Buster Keaton, you get something that really is far more than the sum of its parts. In this instance, it is the parody of the quintessential student athlete as portrayed by Buster Keaton that is the classic. The whole performance has such style that it totally transcends the obviousness of the story. It is almost like he is telling us that "heck, we know where this story is going anyway, but let's see how much fun we can have along the way". Perhaps that is why he was such a genius of the silent era. The supporting cast is, like so many in a Buster Keaton film, just along for the ride and to flesh out a few other parts - nothing great is expected from them other than to get the timing right with the main man. In other words, they do exactly what they are supposed to, and you really cannot ask a whole lot more than that.

    This is the sort of comedy that I never tire of watching. Visual comedy is a long-lost art that died with the end of the silent era, and we are unlikely to ever see it emerge again. Comedy nowadays relies far too much on the one-liner rather than the situation in my view and often falls totally flat on its face as a result. It is not just what you say, but how you deliver it. Buster Keaton obviously could not say anything that we could hear, but he sure as heck could deliver the line. If you love the classic comedies of the silent era, then this is a worthwhile effort indeed.

Transfer Quality

Video

    Seventy four years old and counting. Whilst the source material was apparently restored in 1992, there are still plenty of problems with the material. Some of this gets downright ugly but I would hate to imagine what it looked like before the restoration was done. Still, I cannot help but feel that a more thorough restoration might even overcome some of the still-remaining problems.

    Naturally being from the silent era, the transfer is presented in a Full Frame format, a very close approximation to the original theatrical ratio. The transfer is of course not 16x9 enhanced.

    The main issue with the transfer is the lack of consistency. At times it is quite sharp and well-detailed, at others it is just a little diffuse with a lack of detail due to over-brightening of the transfer, as well as some murkiness. It does take a little bit of perseverance to watch this transfer, and it is certainly not the best example I have seen from the silent era. But if we accept that there is never going to be anything remotely pristine in the way of source material, then the disappointments are somewhat minimized. To some extent we should be thankful that the film-makers of the day realized the inherent limitations of what they were working with and so they used natural light very well, which means that we have no real issues with poor shadow detail. Clarity is not too bad apart from the areas surrounding degraded source material. Grain did not seem to be much of an issue here, and was nothing worse than I was expecting really. There did not seem to be much issue with low level noise in the transfer.

    The black and white is not the best, with a distinct lack of depth to the black tones throughout. The result is a collection of grey tones with a fairly narrow range across the greyscale. The lighter tones are a bit brighter than usual for such a transfer, so that does provide some relief in the overall appearance of the transfer. Whilst more depth to the blacks would have been nice, apart from those sections which are really over-bright, I have no real complaints about what we see here.

    There did not appear to be any significant MPEG artefacts in the transfer. There did not appear to be any significant film-to-video artefacts in the transfer, with just a few instances of aliasing that became just a little noticeable. There are some quite obvious film artefacts in the transfer, most notably a sequence of a few seconds from around 30:58 which is noticeably affected by mildew. There is also a period from around 41:00 that is quite badly affected by stock degradation, which really does detract significantly from the film.

    Overall the transfer is not as good as the earlier The General, but is generally still quite watchable - just don't try and compare it to even the recently reviewed films of the 1950s.
 
 

Video Ratings Summary
Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain
Film-to-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Okay, we are talking about a silent film here, so we should be expecting very little from the single soundtrack on offer on the DVD: an English Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. Obviously it carries the musical accompaniment only, which sounds of distinctly more recent vintage than the film.

    There are plenty of audio sync issues here obviously, since there is nothing to be heard apart from music despite all the lip movement form the actors!

    The musical accompaniment does not appear to have been credited, but it is nothing more than a typical attempt to provide some auditory accompaniment to the on-screen comedy - no easy task I suppose.

    There is nothing wrong with the soundtrack per se, as it is clean and clear with no evidence of hiss or other distortion.
 
 

Audio Ratings Summary
Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Extras

    This a rare instance indeed where the extras package might actually outshine the main feature - at least in one part. The extras comprise two of Buster Keaton's many short films, and one is an absolute hoot!

Menu

    Decent enough with some reasonable audio and animation enhancement to aid the situation. The extras menu could however have been better as it does not really look that great, as the underlying photograph appears to be well out of focus.

Featurette - One Week (18:45)

    This short film dates from 1920 and is one of the true gems of the Buster Keaton filmography! The story is actually about the very first week of the marriage between Buster Keaton and Sybil Seely. After their wedding, they go to the plot of land that an uncle has given them as a wedding present, along with a house. The house is one of those kit homes you put up yourself, so you can imagine what messes Buster Keaton can get up to. The end of the week is highlighted by the fact that they built the house on the wrong plot of land and try to move it across the railroad tracks to the correct plot. 'Nuff said! This is an absolute hoot and a half and even eighty one years on, you cannot help but laugh at the mayhem here. Obviously presented in the same format as the feature film, the source material itself (which has been restored) has some problems and there is a peculiar warpy feel to the image at times which probably relates to stretching of the source material. However, it is not that off-putting and sure as heck does not prevent you enjoying this terrific piece of comedy.

Featurette - The Blacksmith (18:59)

    Another short film, dating this time from 1922, but not such a classic piece of comedy. Oh, don't get me wrong, this is still funny in its own way, it is just that it is not a patch on One Week. Now quite why anyone would employ Buster Keaton as a blacksmith's assistant I have no idea, but the mayhem that results is pretty funny. This one perhaps hearkens back a little to the vaudeville roots of comedy of the silent era, as the opening sequence has a real vaudevillian feel about it, but then it segues into typical Buster Keaton humour. Presented in the same Full Frame format with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound accompaniment, this too is a restored effort, which can only mean that the source material was in shocking condition as there are three distinct sections (around 10:25, 11:13 and 13:13) that are quite severely degraded (it looks like emulsion bubbling if that is an appropriate description for film of this age). This really impacts the amount of visible action at these points, but I suppose I would rather suffer these inconveniences than not have the short film at all. The overall tone of the transfer is in any case quite light, with nothing too special about the black tones at all.

Censorship

    As far as we have been able to ascertain, there are no censorship issues with this title.

R4 vs R1

    There is no really equivalent release in Region 1 to this Region 4 release. The film itself is on a Region 1 DVD along with three short films: The Electric House, The Blacksmith and Hard Work. Unfortunately I have not been able to track down any really reliable reviews of the DVD so am unable to make any specific comments on it. However, I am guessing that the source material would probably be much the same, and therefore it seems logical that there would be no great difference between the Region 1 release and this Region 4 release. Probably call it even in the absence of any overriding concerns.

Summary

    Forget the actual transfer quality here and consider the quality of the comedy. College is a very good example of the art of Buster Keaton and the coupling with the extremely funny One Week far outweighs the technical limitations here. If you have any interest in classic silent comedy then you should indulge in this effort but less serious aficionados would perhaps be advised to give it a rental first.
 
 

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris (have a laugh, check out the bio)
27th May, 2001.

Review Equipment
DVD Pioneer DV-515; S-video output
Display Sony Trinitron Wega 80cm. Calibrated with the NTSC DVD version of Video Essentials.
Audio Decoder Built in
Amplification Yamaha RXV-795. Calibrated with the NTSC DVD version of Video Essentials.
Speakers Energy Speakers: centre EXLC; left and right C-2; rears EXLR; and subwoofer ES-12XL