Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928)

Director:

Charles Reisner

Writer:

Carl Harbaugh (story)

Release Date:

20 May 1928 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Comedy | Drama | Family | Romance

Tagline:

The Laugh Special of the Age. See It.

Plot:

The effete son of a cantankerous riverboat captain comes to join his father's crew.

Plot Keywords:

River | Captain | Rescue | Riverboat | Hurricane

Cast

Buster Keaton	...	William Canfield Jr.
Tom McGuire	...	John James King
Ernest Torrence	...	William 'Steamboat Bill' Canfield Sr.
Tom Lewis	...	Tom Carter, first mate
Marion Byron	...	Kitty King (credit only)

Runtime:

71 min | Argentina:73 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 | Sweden:Btl | Spain:T | Argentina:Atp

Filming Locations:

Sacramento River, California, USA

Company:

Buster Keaton Productions

Trivia:

The stunt where the wall falls on Buster Keaton was performed with an actual full-weight wall. Half the crew walked off the set rather than participate in a stunt that would have killed Keaton if he had been slightly off position. Keaton himself, told the previous day that his studio was being shut down, was so devastated that he didn't care if the wall crushed him or not.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: During the final cyclone sequence, a cable pulling down the entire front of a building is clearly visible.

Quotes:

William 'Steamboat Bill' Canfield Sr.: [to the barber about his son's moustache] Take that barnacle off his lip.

Movie Connections:

References Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926)

Blow

This follows a pattern that Keaton would follow in a few of his most amazing films. The first half would just set up the situation and incidentally give a few mild jokes along the way. The second part is structured around a frantic set of stunts that are both comic and athletic. These must have astonished when they were new; its an odd thing that all the really interesting effects in films of this era were not for science fiction or action, but comedy.

Today, these effects and particularly Keaton's, astonish ever so much more. Jackie Chan is the closest we have now, or recently. Chan knows that when we see something that we know is real: Chan jumping off a helicopter for instance, and when that is done with a comic tone, for some reason we chuckle more deeply.

(Stephen Chow's projects are a twist on this. We know the stunts aren't real, but they are much more extreme, and they deliberately reference other movies.) This collection of stunts has Keaton take a large river steam paddlewheeler, a rig it up to operate the boiler room by ropes from the pilothouse. Keaton's agility is absolutely phenomenal: today such acrobatics would surely be computer generated. Its not obvious that the man is risking his life. But as with his railroad movie, it is obvious that this is a real machine in a real raging river during real serious wind, though the wind might be generated with machines.

This is big stuff, important to watch and real thrill.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.