College (1927)

Buster Keaton's follow-up to his finest work, The General, would be a picture that lied more along the lines of what was expected to be produced by the skilled physical comedian and filmmaker. After the box office and critical failure of his Civil War "epic" (I use that term for it was a huge financial picture for a comedy) his second movie of the year 1927 would take far less money to produce as it would simply be shot around existing settings in Los Angeles in modern times and would hing solely on the skill of Keaton himself. The film would prove to be funny as well as an interesting look back at a younger, less developed Los Angeles and show how Buster creates a picture all by himself.

Produced under the United Artists label, which still gave Keaton a freedom to produce a product with a limited amount of notes from the suits in the studio, Buster and his producer Joseph Schenck knew they needed to come up with a picture on the cheap after the monumental production of The General that opened earlier in the year. Riding off of a box office failure the two needed the income to balance their books. To do so Buster would go back to his roots by producing a movie in the surrounding of the city which lied just beyond his doorstep with no lavish wardrobe or stars other then himself.

The story would be a simple one that would line Keaton up in various situations where he would create plenty of gags, which is what the audience wanted. (A perfect formula: make cheap funny movie+ his normal audience goes to see him and be made to laugh= easy $$$). Keaton plays an unpopular book worm of a student, Robert, fresh out of high school who was told by his girlfriend, Mary (Anne Cornwall), that she liked athletes instead of him. So to impress his girl Buster attends an athletically centered college where he would desperately try out for every sport he could. Their are many humorous scenes with him trying and failing at every track and field sport there is. These scenes were filmed in the historic Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum years before it would host its first Olympic games in 1934. He would even try and horribly fail at baseball, which is funny to note for Buster was actually a truly skilled athletic that would play baseball regularly while off camera. Eventually as a favor from the dean of the college, he would land a spot of the rowing team. On the day of the big race, Mary's jock boyfriend gets in trouble and is kicked out of school and he wants to take her down with him, so he kidnaps Mary. Of course Robert would save her and win the race all moments from each other, thus winning her heart and the happy ending.

The film is entertaining to watch for a laugh from the silent era. It gives us an interesting look at Los Angeles with the Coliseum, as well as some shots taken on the campus of a smaller USC and on the relatively barren streets of Los Angeles before it would explode in a population boom during the mid 20th century. We see a hint of what college life was like then in the 20s, satirized it may be it shows us some true aspects. Interestingly we also see in a scene where Buster is looking for a job at a soda fountain a real soda jerk working his trade with the greatest of ease and skill, a look into a by-gone part of Americana. Though Keaton's character is a failure at athletics in the film, by watching you can see that Buster was a true athlete, and with his comic flair he can make us laugh, even in a cheap film produced simply to pay the bills.