Honeymoon in a prefabricated house
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Honeymoon in Prefabricated Buster Keaton's first honeymoon |
| Original title | One week |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1920 |
| length | 22 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Edward F. Cline , Buster Keaton |
| script |
Edward F. Cline , Buster Keaton |
| production | Joseph M. Schenck for Metro Pictures |
| camera | Elgin Lessley |
| cut | Buster Keaton |
| occupation | |
| |
Honeymoon in the Prefabricated House (Original Title: One Week ; Alternative Title: Buster Keaton's First Honeymoon ) is an American silent film comedy from 1920 by Edward F. Cline and Buster Keaton . It was the first published solo film of the future star comedian Keaton, after he had previously only worked as a supporting actor for Roscoe Arbuckle .
action
Monday: For their wedding, Buster and Sybil receive a gift from an uncle to build a house packed in boxes, which supposedly can be built without a craftsman within a week. The couple go to work with enthusiasm, but Buster's jealous rival Hank, who was inferior in the bid for Sybil, changes the numbering of the components, which, in addition to the clumsiness of the young couple, makes building the house difficult.
After the couple worked with a lot of devotion, improvisational talent and acrobatics during the week, a wondrous, terribly crooked building emerges before the end of the construction period on Friday, the 13th, which turns out to be unsuitable for wind, weather and also quite unsuitable for living proves: During the inauguration ceremony, of all times, it is pouring rain through the roof, and when a storm approaches, the house starts to spin like a carousel. A door leading to the outside in the wrong place on the first floor comes in handy for Buster to get revenge on Hank for his act of sabotage. On Saturday, to make matters worse, the couple received the message that they had built the house on the wrong side of the railway tracks by turning the number and that they still had to move with the already shaky wooden structure. And so the work gets jammed on Sunday during transport in the middle of the tracks. In panic, the couple want to save their house from an arriving train, which, surprisingly, drives past on the neighboring track. A train coming from the opposite direction hits the building and destroys it. Buster puts up a "For Sale" sign next to the ruin and leaves the building instructions for the house, then he and Sybil walk away.
background
Buster Keaton had made a name for himself as a comedian in the late 1910s, primarily through his regular supporting roles in the films of star comedian Roscoe Arbuckle . Keaton got the idea for the film after watching the industry documentary Home Made (1919) about prefabricated houses . In Home Made , a young couple also build a prefabricated house (but more successfully here than in One Week ), Keaton deliberately designed the film as a parody of Home Made . One Week was Buster Keaton's first solo film as a standalone comedian to be released in theaters. While Keaton had already previously with The High Sign filmed a solo film, but was felt The High Sign to be weaker compared to this film. Because Keaton wanted to start his solo career as a comedian with a success, the "better" One Week was released in theaters on September 1, 1920 - seven months before The High Sign premiered in April 1921.
The main female role alongside Keaton was played by Sybil Seely , who was to act as his leading lady in four other short films . Heavy stage comedian Joe Roberts made his film debut in a small role as a squat piano supplier . A fruitful collaboration developed between Keaton and Roberts, the two of whom were to make a total of 18 films together by the time Robert died in 1923. The rest of the cast, including the jealous love rival, can no longer be determined today.
Even in this early film, Keaton attached importance to many things that characterized his later films: the authenticity of the stunts and tricks, technical gadgets and innovations, playing with the viewer's expectations and spectacular slapstick. His canvas figure of the stone face with the corresponding behaviors was already fully developed with One Week . The prefabricated house was placed on a turntable for the film, which is why scenes such as the building turning in the wind or the violent collision with the train at the end of the film are authentic and were shot that way. The stunts were real too, for example, when Keaton fell out of the bathroom door in the film, he suffered severe bruises that temporarily made his back and arms swell.
reception
One Week is considered to be an astonishingly good early work by new director Buster Keaton as well as a classic of silent short film comedy. Despite its brevity, the film became one of the major successes of 1920 with audiences at the time. The New York Times also emphasized in its review of October 25, 1920 that One Week was clearly funnier than most comparable slapstick comedies.
The film had its German premiere on February 18, 1925 under the title Buster Keaton's first honeymoon .
Awards
In 2000, One Week was listed in the National Film Registry as "Culturally, Historically, or Aesthetically Significant".
Web links
- Honeymoon in a prefabricated house on the Internet Archive
- Honeymoon in prefabricated houses in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- One Week at busterkeaton.com
Individual evidence
- ^ Keaton, Eleanor, and Vance, Jeffrey (2001): Buster Keaton Remembered ; P. 69.
- ↑ "One Week" at TCM
- ↑ "One Week" at TCM
- ^ Keaton, Eleanor, and Vance, Jeffrey (2001): Buster Keaton Remembered ; P. 69.
- ^ "One Week" at Allmovie
- ^ The Screen , New York Times, Oct 25, 1920, p. 22
- ↑ Michael Hanisch: About them laugh (t) en millions , Henschelverlag, Berlin, 1976, p. 207