The Feud Between Convention and Originality
Today's review: Our Hospitality.
While I do consider myself a movie buff, I actually haven’t explored the era of silent comedy as much as you might think. I’ve seen enough Chaplin to know I don’t much care for him, but I’ve only seen one or two movies from his contemporaries, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton. I decided to try to change that a bit by watching Keaton’s Our Hospitality, and while it does have some problems, I’d say I liked it on the whole. Certainly I had more fun with it than I generally do with Chaplin.
The story starts off on a surprisingly serious note, as we learn about the longstanding feud between the Canfields and the McKays. One rainy night, John McKay (Edward Coxen) kills and then is killed by a Canfield, prompting the dead Canfield’s brother Joseph (Joe Roberts) to vow to continue the feud, even though he’d been reluctant to do so initially. Sensing the danger, John’s widow (Jean Dumas) takes her young son Willie and flees to New York, hoping to keep him from getting caught up in this feud. Thirty years later, Mrs. McKay has passed on, her son has grown up to be played by Buster Keaton, and Willie receives a letter telling him he has to return to his home to claim the McKay estate. Before he leaves, he’s informed about the feud, and promises not to get involved in it. During the long train ride back, he shares a compartment with a pretty young woman named Virginia (Natalie Talmadge). To no one’s surprise, not only do they find themselves attracted to each other, but Virginia turns out to be the daughter of Joseph Canfield, who wants to permanently put an end to the McKay line with the help of his two sons (Francis X. Bushman Jr. and Craig Ward), but keeps being foiled, sometimes by comedic timing, sometimes by the rule that you can’t harm a guest for as long as he’s under your roof. Sometimes Willie is oblivious, sometimes he has to use cunning, but one thing’s for sure; there’s almost always going to be slapstick involved.
I’d say a lot of the comedy is particularly hit and miss in this movie. On the one hand, some of the bits are pretty creative and/or clever, like a perspective trick involving a horse. On the other, some of the gags (or settings for the gags) go on for far too long. I’m thinking particularly of the fifteen or so minutes that focus on Willie’s train journey; the scene where Willie is lingering in the Canfield house and finding really weak excuses not to leave; and some struggles involving a log. Maybe some of this was just silent movie convention, but if you don’t find these bits amusing, they start to drag the movie down, made worse by the fact that they cut into time that I think could have been better spent elsewhere. For example, you could get quite a bit of mileage out of Willie finding excuses to stay in the Canfield house-in fact, given the title, you’d assume that was going to be the central point of the humor. Instead, most of the comedy centers around the train journey to get to the main conflict and the chase that ensues after Willie finally gets out of the Canfield house. There are only one or two scenes of Willie taking advantage of the hospitality rule, and he doesn’t always use the tricks I’d expect (like faking ill). I suppose I should applaud the writers for not going in the expected direction at times, but their choices of what to focus on were a bit odd.
That being said, I was generally amused by the gags more often than not, as long as they didn’t overstay their welcome. Keaton and his famous “stone face” make him come across as sympathetic or fairly cunning, depending on the circumstances. I also have to applaud both Talmadge and the writers for taking Virginia and making her proactive at key moments in the story. It’s fairly small by the standards of what I tend to consider as “impressive women”, but there are enough little moments that add up to me being impressed. Especially since there’s a moment where Talmadge may have had to do a somewhat tricky stunt. So while there wasn’t as much focus on story or truly story-driven jokes as I’d have liked, everyone tried to make the most out of what they were given, and generally succeeded.
Finally, I have some smaller items to point out. The early sections of the movie give us a glimpse at both early New York City and early trains, and both of them initially seemed too unbelievable to be true. New York looks like a suburb would nowadays (only with even fewer houses), and the train is basically a crude engine with stagecoaches attached to them. But I did some Googling afterwards, and while I can’t confirm that that’s what New York used to look like, the trains were apparently authentic. I mostly bring this up because seeing those things may either pull you out of the movie or serve as an interesting time capsule, depending on your point of view. Another thing that winds up becoming noticeable is the inclusion of Willie’s dog. When he leaves for the old homestead, his dog decides to go after him, and follows behind the train. And when I say “follows behind the train”, I mean “literally manages to keep pace with the train, sometimes walking directly under one of the stagecoaches”. While it’s an amusing commentary on the state of the train, it’s a little too implausible to fully suspend your disbelief over. Once Willie arrives at his old home town, the dog reunites with him and then continues to linger, both helping and hurting his attempts to stay in the Canfield house. Given all the screentime it had had up to that point, I assumed it was going to continue to play a large role. In fact, since there had been several lingering shots of the Canfield’s much larger dog, I’d assumed there’d be some humor revolving around the two dogs interacting, and maybe getting into a relationship just like Virginia and Willie. But then both dogs simply disappear out of the plot as we enter the third act and an extended chase scene. It just felt odd to drop what had been a fairly consistent source of humor, though at least some of the jokes during the chase made up for it. And my last point is mostly noteworthy because of after the fact information. A fair bit of the comedy revolves around trains, near misses, and things falling down. Perhaps those were staples of silent comedy, but I really couldn’t help but think that this may have been a dry run for Keaton’s most famous movie, The General. Either that or it’s a huge coincidence, but either way, it’s kind of funny to see when you know about Keaton’s other work.
Overall, I’d recommend giving this movie a shot. Despite some of the overlong gags, the movie on the whole is pretty short (a little over an hour), and the good definitely outweighs the bad. I don’t know if it’s laugh-out-loud funny, but it certainly made me smile more than a lot of modern comedies tend to. I’d say that’s a pretty big point in its favor.
CAT ALERT: At the very start of the movie, when we see baby Willy (played, amusingly and appropriately enough, by Buster Keaton Jr.), we also see a cat stick its head out of the cradle for a moment before ducking back in. Alas, we never see it again, it doesn’t appear to have made the journey to New York, and dogs become the animal of choice. Still, it definitely makes for a cute opening.
While I do consider myself a movie buff, I actually haven’t explored the era of silent comedy as much as you might think. I’ve seen enough Chaplin to know I don’t much care for him, but I’ve only seen one or two movies from his contemporaries, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton. I decided to try to change that a bit by watching Keaton’s Our Hospitality, and while it does have some problems, I’d say I liked it on the whole. Certainly I had more fun with it than I generally do with Chaplin.
The story starts off on a surprisingly serious note, as we learn about the longstanding feud between the Canfields and the McKays. One rainy night, John McKay (Edward Coxen) kills and then is killed by a Canfield, prompting the dead Canfield’s brother Joseph (Joe Roberts) to vow to continue the feud, even though he’d been reluctant to do so initially. Sensing the danger, John’s widow (Jean Dumas) takes her young son Willie and flees to New York, hoping to keep him from getting caught up in this feud. Thirty years later, Mrs. McKay has passed on, her son has grown up to be played by Buster Keaton, and Willie receives a letter telling him he has to return to his home to claim the McKay estate. Before he leaves, he’s informed about the feud, and promises not to get involved in it. During the long train ride back, he shares a compartment with a pretty young woman named Virginia (Natalie Talmadge). To no one’s surprise, not only do they find themselves attracted to each other, but Virginia turns out to be the daughter of Joseph Canfield, who wants to permanently put an end to the McKay line with the help of his two sons (Francis X. Bushman Jr. and Craig Ward), but keeps being foiled, sometimes by comedic timing, sometimes by the rule that you can’t harm a guest for as long as he’s under your roof. Sometimes Willie is oblivious, sometimes he has to use cunning, but one thing’s for sure; there’s almost always going to be slapstick involved.
I’d say a lot of the comedy is particularly hit and miss in this movie. On the one hand, some of the bits are pretty creative and/or clever, like a perspective trick involving a horse. On the other, some of the gags (or settings for the gags) go on for far too long. I’m thinking particularly of the fifteen or so minutes that focus on Willie’s train journey; the scene where Willie is lingering in the Canfield house and finding really weak excuses not to leave; and some struggles involving a log. Maybe some of this was just silent movie convention, but if you don’t find these bits amusing, they start to drag the movie down, made worse by the fact that they cut into time that I think could have been better spent elsewhere. For example, you could get quite a bit of mileage out of Willie finding excuses to stay in the Canfield house-in fact, given the title, you’d assume that was going to be the central point of the humor. Instead, most of the comedy centers around the train journey to get to the main conflict and the chase that ensues after Willie finally gets out of the Canfield house. There are only one or two scenes of Willie taking advantage of the hospitality rule, and he doesn’t always use the tricks I’d expect (like faking ill). I suppose I should applaud the writers for not going in the expected direction at times, but their choices of what to focus on were a bit odd.
That being said, I was generally amused by the gags more often than not, as long as they didn’t overstay their welcome. Keaton and his famous “stone face” make him come across as sympathetic or fairly cunning, depending on the circumstances. I also have to applaud both Talmadge and the writers for taking Virginia and making her proactive at key moments in the story. It’s fairly small by the standards of what I tend to consider as “impressive women”, but there are enough little moments that add up to me being impressed. Especially since there’s a moment where Talmadge may have had to do a somewhat tricky stunt. So while there wasn’t as much focus on story or truly story-driven jokes as I’d have liked, everyone tried to make the most out of what they were given, and generally succeeded.
Finally, I have some smaller items to point out. The early sections of the movie give us a glimpse at both early New York City and early trains, and both of them initially seemed too unbelievable to be true. New York looks like a suburb would nowadays (only with even fewer houses), and the train is basically a crude engine with stagecoaches attached to them. But I did some Googling afterwards, and while I can’t confirm that that’s what New York used to look like, the trains were apparently authentic. I mostly bring this up because seeing those things may either pull you out of the movie or serve as an interesting time capsule, depending on your point of view. Another thing that winds up becoming noticeable is the inclusion of Willie’s dog. When he leaves for the old homestead, his dog decides to go after him, and follows behind the train. And when I say “follows behind the train”, I mean “literally manages to keep pace with the train, sometimes walking directly under one of the stagecoaches”. While it’s an amusing commentary on the state of the train, it’s a little too implausible to fully suspend your disbelief over. Once Willie arrives at his old home town, the dog reunites with him and then continues to linger, both helping and hurting his attempts to stay in the Canfield house. Given all the screentime it had had up to that point, I assumed it was going to continue to play a large role. In fact, since there had been several lingering shots of the Canfield’s much larger dog, I’d assumed there’d be some humor revolving around the two dogs interacting, and maybe getting into a relationship just like Virginia and Willie. But then both dogs simply disappear out of the plot as we enter the third act and an extended chase scene. It just felt odd to drop what had been a fairly consistent source of humor, though at least some of the jokes during the chase made up for it. And my last point is mostly noteworthy because of after the fact information. A fair bit of the comedy revolves around trains, near misses, and things falling down. Perhaps those were staples of silent comedy, but I really couldn’t help but think that this may have been a dry run for Keaton’s most famous movie, The General. Either that or it’s a huge coincidence, but either way, it’s kind of funny to see when you know about Keaton’s other work.
Overall, I’d recommend giving this movie a shot. Despite some of the overlong gags, the movie on the whole is pretty short (a little over an hour), and the good definitely outweighs the bad. I don’t know if it’s laugh-out-loud funny, but it certainly made me smile more than a lot of modern comedies tend to. I’d say that’s a pretty big point in its favor.
CAT ALERT: At the very start of the movie, when we see baby Willy (played, amusingly and appropriately enough, by Buster Keaton Jr.), we also see a cat stick its head out of the cradle for a moment before ducking back in. Alas, we never see it again, it doesn’t appear to have made the journey to New York, and dogs become the animal of choice. Still, it definitely makes for a cute opening.