Buster and the police
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Buster and the Police Buster is moving |
| Original title | Cops |
 | |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1922 |
| length | 18 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK o. A. |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Edward F. Cline Buster Keaton |
| script | Edward F. Cline Buster Keaton |
| production | Joseph M. Schenck |
| camera | Elgin Lessley |
| cut | Buster Keaton |
| occupation | |
| |
Buster and the Police (Original Title: Cops ; Alternative Title: Buster Moves ) is a silent short film by Edward F. Cline and Buster Keaton from 1922. The slapstick comedy was included in 1997 in the US National Film Registry .
action
A young man (played by Buster Keaton) wants to win a young lady's heart. However, this requires him to become a successful businessman. So he decides to go to town and get some money. When he returns the fallen wallet to a wealthy man, he expects a finder's reward, but in vain. Due to some strange circumstances, he still gets the man's wallet and drives away in his taxi. While getting out of the car, he is watched by a con artist who now pretends to have gone bankrupt. Out of compassion, the young man buys his household effects, which actually belong to a family that is about to move. The young man mistakenly buys a carriage from a tramp for $ 5 and starts loading the furniture. Unsuspecting, the family says it's the movers and helps him load up.
Now begins a bizarre journey that finally leads the young man into the middle of a police parade. When an assassin drops a bomb, everyone thinks the young man is the culprit. Chaos breaks out and the man runs for his life. Finally he succeeds in locking the army of policemen in the police headquarters. When his beloved shows up, however, she does not look at him. Disappointed, he opens the door to the police headquarters and takes it to the lion's den. The film ends with a tombstone with the protagonist's hat next to it.
background
The film was released on January 21, 1922. As with many films, Keaton directed and choreographed the famous car chase scene. The film was shot on the streets of Los Angeles . It takes about 12 minutes for the hunt to start. The ending accumulates in a crowd scene, staged as in David Wark Griffith's The Birth of a Nation . Keaton staged this scene through multiple shots that were cut into the scene. A wide-angle setting is used to integrate as many identical-looking police officers as possible into a scene. Then there were smaller scenes in which different police officers stand in each other's way and turn each other off.
The special thing is that the protagonist of the film does not even notice how he attracts the displeasure of his surroundings and slips unsuspecting into the catastrophe. There has been much speculation that Buster and the police were a response to the false accusations and the scandal surrounding Keaton's friend and mentor, Fatty Arbuckle .
Filming a scene with a bomb, especially on a carriage, was a tricky business. The Wall Street bombing occurred just two years earlier , in which a bomb was detonated on a horse-drawn cart in New York. The distribution company shrank back at first, but then released the film. In fact, the film was not interpreted in this way and the references to the Arbuckle process, which was being revised at the time , were not taken into account.
reception
Buster and the Police is considered to be one of the classic slapstick films with and by Buster Keaton. The Thuringia Film Communication Association describes him as “one of Buster Keaton's best short films ever. In Cops he shows his talents [as] an artist and a comedian. ”The film contains a number of classic scenes that recur in many forms. Throwing away a bomb is a popular stylistic device in cartoons. Jackie Chan used a ladder sequence from the film as inspiration for his martial arts scenes. Also noteworthy is a scene in which Keaton jumps on a moving car. In particular, the chase was praised by the critics of the time. In fact, the success was so great that various cinemas highlighted the film on the billboards and the following feature film below it.
Web links
- Buster and the police in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Cops on the Internet Archive
- Cops at busterkeaton.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c James L. Neibaur, Terri Niemi: Buster Keaton's Silent Shorts: 1920-1923 . Scarecrow Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-8108-8741-1 , pp. 141-152 .
- ^ Robert Knopf: The Theater and Cinema of Buster Keaton . Princeton University Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0-691-00442-6 , pp. 65-67 .
- ^ Marion Meade: Buster Keaton: Cut to the Chase . E-reads / E-rights, 2011, ISBN 978-1-61756-074-3 , pp. Chapter 12 .
- ↑ Catalog entry. Film communication Thuringia, accessed on April 18, 2014 .
- ↑ Cops. Turner Classic Movies , accessed April 18, 2014 .