Thursday, 12 April 2012

The Garage (Arbuckle / Keaton 1920)

I could have watched this all day. You know, I think some consideration should be given to Fatty and Buster as the greatest comedy team of all time. I don't care if they only made- what was it?- 14 short films: they were fantastic together. This has got just about everything- perhaps a marginally more appealing leading lady and it would have been perfect.
The boys work as garage attendants-cum-firemen. You know, I'm not convinced that these duties were ever routinely combined, but there you go. After a busy morning cleaning Fords and fleecing customers, they are off out battling fires in the afternon, while the boss's daughter enjoys a complicated love life around them. Admittedly there do seem to be rather a lot of disparate elements thrown together here, and, no, it doesn't particularly hang together very well, but for goodness sake, you're not going to get a better sign of quality than the names of Arbuckle and Keaton in the credits, and 'The Garage's is just great.
The funniest little episode is probably the bit with the rotating car drying device (if it has an accepted name, I have no idea what it is)- it's fascinating here to compare and contrast the differing physical styles of the comedians, and how well they use their bodies. Arbuckle was every bit as much a physical comedian as Buster, but their whole approach to their gags was very different. Lovely moment too with Buster's tribute to Harry Lauder- really beautiful, and had me looking Sir Harry up on Wikipedia. Had no idea how famous he was at the time.
Just a quick note on the music on the Masters of Cinema DVD of this- well, actually not the music itself, that's tolerable, but the constant irritating sound effects: whistles and musical 'comments' on what's happening on screen. You will want to turn the sound off.

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