Three Ages (1923)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Director:

Buster Keaton

Writer:

Buster Keaton (writer)

Release Date:

24 September 1923 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy

Tagline:

A Metro Picture in 6 Parts

Plot:

The misadventures of Buster in three seperate historical periods.

Plot Keywords:

Chariot Race | Anachronism | Dog Sled | Ancient Rome | Dinosaur

Cast

Margaret Leahy	...	The Girl
Wallace Beery	...	The Villain
Buster Keaton	...	The Boy
Lillian Lawrence	...	The Girl's Mother
Joe Roberts	...	The Girl's Father

Runtime:

63 min | Spain:55 min

Country:

USA

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Certification:

Australia:G | Portugal:M/6 | UK:U | Spain:T

Filming Locations:

Hill Street, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Buster Keaton Productions

Trivia:

Buster Keaton's first feature film. He chose to construct the film as a series of separate episodes so the film could be cut into individual shorts to be re-released on their own if the feature was a failure.

Movie Connections:

Featured in The Fall (2006)

Buster Battles Wallace Through The Ages

I'd have to rate this as slightly above-average Keaton fare. It shows Buster trying to romance the girl away from Wallace Beery, and what would have transpired if the story had taken place in (1) the Stone Age; (2) The Roman Age, and (3) The Modern Age.

I liked them in that order, too, with more laughs with the older periods of time, although I laughed at the hardest at a couple of segments in the Roman Age. My favorite was the chariot race held in the sand. That had a number of clever things in the segment. The brief bit with the lion was funny, too, sort of a parody of the Biblical story of Daniel in the lion's den.

They were smart only going five minutes or so with each age and then going back with the story each time. Each "age" had four or five segments in total.

Nothing hilarious but definitely worth your time if you are checking out silent film comedies