This review is sponsored by
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Category | Comedy | Menu Audio and Animation
Featurette - One Week (18:45) Featurette - The Blacksmith (18:59) |
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Rating | |||
Year Released | 1927 | ||
Running Time | 64:48 minutes | ||
RSDL/Flipper | No/No |
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Start Up | Menu | ||
Region | 1,2,3,4,5,6 | Director | James W Horne |
Distributor |
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 |
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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 |
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Macrovision | ? | Smoking | Yes |
Subtitles | None | Annoying Product Placement | No |
Action In or After Credits | No |
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.
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.
Sharpness | |
Shadow Detail | |
Colour | |
Grain | |
Film-to-Video Artefacts | |
Film Artefacts | |
Overall |
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.
Dialogue | |
Audio Sync | |
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts | |
Surround Channel Use | |
Subwoofer | |
Overall |
Video | |
Audio | |
Extras | |
Plot | |
Overall |
© Ian Morris (have
a laugh, check out the bio)
27th May, 2001.
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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 |