College (1927)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Director:

James W. Horne

Writers:

Bryan Foy (writer)
Carl Harbaugh (writer)

Release Date:

10 September 1927 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama | Sport

Tagline:

You'll graduate with a perpetual smile!

Plot:

To reconcile with his girlfriend, a bookish college student tries to become an athlete.

Plot Keywords:

College | School | College Student | Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum | Help Wanted Sign

Cast

Buster Keaton	...	Ronald, The Boy
Anne Cornwall	...	Mary Haynes, The Girl
Flora Bramley	...	Mary's friend
Harold Goodwin	...	Jeff Brown, A rival
Snitz Edwards	...	Dean Edwards
Carl Harbaugh	...	Crew coach
Sam Crawford	...	Baseball coach
Florence Turner	...	Ronald's mother

Runtime:

USA:66 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Certification:

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

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles City College, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Joseph M. Schenck Productions

Trivia:

The pole vault near the end of the movie is one of the few stunts in his career that Buster Keaton did not perform himself.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004) (TV)

Athletics provides Keaton with a goldmine of great gags

While this may seem a rather lightweight effort considering it came in the same year that produced 'The General (1927),' 'College' is an excellent little film in which Buster Keaton exploits the endless slapstick possibilities offered by sporting activities. Keaton plays Ronald, an unpopular bookworm whose public condemnation of athletics leads his girlfriend (Anne Cornwall) to dump him in favour of a more physically-capable jock (Harold Goodwin). In an attempt to win back the love of his life, Ronald enrolls himself in college and tries his hands at every sport in sight, with hilarious consequences. The two preceding sentences pretty much summarise the entire film. However, this inkling of a narrative is more than enough to open up a vast range of entertaining gags, and Keaton snatches a laugh at every opportunity.

How do I begin to list my favourite moments from 'College?' Though some have complained of the repetitiveness of the sequence in which Keaton tries every athletics activity in the book, I thought it was the highlight of the film. The scenes follow a very strict comedic routine: first we see how it is supposed to be done, then we see Ronald's absurdly inept attempt. Wash, rinse, repeat; this time with a completely different sport. Of course the routine becomes somewhat predictable, but Buster Keaton is always the uncertain variable. We don't know how his next effort is going to fail, but we know it is, and that it's going to be a spectacular failure. Ronald is a hopeless case, but you can't deny that he's got heart. Whether he is being out-sprinted by a pair of young children, falling short of the long-jump sandpit, snapping a pole-vaulting stick in half or planting his face two feet underground after clearing the high-jump bar, he is always courageous enough to get up, brush himself off and try again.

I've read that Harold Lloyd explored similar territory two years earlier with 'The Freshman (1925),' a film I haven't seen yet, so that one's probably a good film to look up if you, like me, enjoyed this one. It is also believed that there was originally a sequence showing Ronald's attempts to play American football, though this was ulimately cut to avoid comparisons with Lloyd's movie. Additionally, I was interested to read that Ronald's pole-vault through the window was one of the few times in Keaton's career that he didn't perform his own stunts. I'm certain that the danger-level was definitely not the problem {anybody who's seen 'Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)' will attest to that}, but pole-vaulting must have been one activity that he simply couldn't pull off. I don't blame him.