I knew nothing about this one before watching it, and I'm not sure how much more I really know about it now. I don't think I particularly liked it, but it threw me- I was expecting 'just another' Keaton short, with all that implies, and 'The Frozen North' manifestly isn't that.
Buster is a kind of arctic evil genius, with Joe Roberts as his loyal henchman- it's a melodrama pastiche with everyone playing against type but frankly it's more... interesting than it is enjoyable. We are thrown straight into the middle of an ongoing scenario (though given the film's length I'm guessing there may be a scene or two missing somewhere along the way) with Buster attempting to hold up a saloon single-handedly and then shooting a couple of lovers dead after mistaking the girl for his wife and her house for his own house. And of course by this point you're well aware that you're not getting a typical Buster Keaton product, but you're still not entirely sure what it is you are getting. Buster's a cheater, a lothario, a villain through and through, and yes of course it's all revealed to be a dream, and of course we know he's sending stuff up, but it's still a shock to the system. A shock that would perhaps be easier to take if it were just a tad funnier.
And this is where my ignorance of the source material for his pastiche is probably doing Buster a disservice- all I can do is imagine the wild overacting and the outlandish scenarios in the films he is taking down a peg or two: I can guess what they were like and I can guess why this film was probably funnier in 1922 than it is now.
There's an overplayed and predictable ice-fishing scene though that I'm damned sure was just as tiresome ninety years ago as it seems today.
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