Our Hospitality (1923)

Buster Keaton, son in a vaudeville family, grew up on the stage entertaining audiences with his remarkable physical skills and his absolutely straight faced look. "Old Stoneface," as he would be nicknamed, would go on to become a big draw in Hollywood as he would produce some of the best comedies in the silent era and most of them not under a major studio, making him one of the most successful independent filmmakers of his time. Though competing with the huge star of Chaplin and competing alongside of Harold Lloyd, Keaton had a style all his own.

Our Hospitality was just one of his films that showed his wonderfully aestheticism, but one that very much sums up the type of film he loved to produce. The story follows the family quarrels of the Canfield's and the McKay's (An obvious satire of the Hatfields and the McCoys). Buster plays the role of Willie McKay, the son in the feuding family, who was sent off to New York City to be raise sheltered far away from the feud. As he learns of the death of his father he decided to travel home to his family, along the way becoming acquainted to the beautiful Virginia Canfield (played by real life wife Natalie Talmadge). Upon arriving to their hometown Virginia invites Willie over for dinner, with both unknowing of the feud and each other being from the rival family, so we have a little bit of a Romeo and Juliet thing going on here.

The hilarity really starts once the the Canfields discover Willie is a McKay and pursue to off him, yet they have one southern rule to not kill him while he is a guest in their house, a rule called "our hospitality" (oh the name of the film!). The comedy comes from Buster eluding the threat on his life by staying within the walls of the Canfield home, including his skill of dodging bullets unknowing and always keeping one eye open during the saying of grace. The Canfield do their best to get him out of their home, but Willie escapes every time. Willie would eventually escape the house dressed as a woman before being pursued through the mountains and performing stunts over waterfalls before arriving home where he and Virginia wed and thus concluding the old feud and the two sides put their troubles aside for the love of these two.

This is just one of the classic films in the Keaton collection. It is a rather simple story, usually based off an existing story or event, in this case the Hatfield-McCoy feud. After the story is established, Keaton plays the straight faced man that doesn't quite know what he has got himself into, such can be seen in his bullet dodging scene. Soon he catches on and runs for his life. He goes on to perform some huge stunts and later the film will conclude, letting out an exhale with one last joke, in this movie it was Keaton returning all the guns he stole from the Canfields to save his life. That is his formula. Simple, but always funny.

The show his athleticism in this picture, we see perhaps his greatest stunt of them all. Keaton suffered for his art to make it seem so effortless as possible and it was never truer then what we see in this film. In the climatic chase scene near the end of the picture Keaton floats down a real roaring rapid, a stunt that nearly drowned him. This was concluded with him nearly falling down a waterfall, but catching himself and his lovely Virgina. Here Keaton would dislocate is shoulder to do this heroic stunt all in the name of good entertainment.

Keaton pushed himself to the very limits to wow the audience and this was yet another of his great successes. His films were always simple, but you can't help but be drawn in to see how Keaton, and his characters, dramatically got through it all. Keaton was almost magical on screen as he never used a stunt double and always made his stunts big and effortless. He was a true treasure of Hollywood in the silent age.