In the far north
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | In the far north |
| Original title | The Frozen North |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1922 |
| length | 17 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Edward F. Cline , Buster Keaton |
| script | Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton |
| production | Joseph Schenck |
| camera | Elgin Lessley |
| cut | Buster Keaton |
| occupation | |
| |
In the far north is a US-based short film - comedy from 1922 with Buster Keaton in the title role, which is also shared with Edward F. Cline was responsible for screenwriting and directing. The film was a parody of the melodramas and westerns of the time, especially the films of cowboy star William S. Hart .
action
Buster Keaton plays the role of the "bad man" (a parody of William S. Hart ), who is up to mischief as a villainous cowboy with idiot behavior in icy Alaska . In the very first scene he tries to use a trick to rob the guests of a saloon, which goes completely wrong. In the next scene, the bad man shoots a couple of lovers, which turns out to be a mistake: He mistook the woman who was shot for his wife and made a mistake at the front door. When the bad man arrives at his real wife in the next scene, he treats her cruelly and dismissively. Instead, he prefers to devote himself to the beautiful but married neighbor, whom he ensnares by all means. When the neighbor moves with her husband, the bad man and his companion drive after the neighbor in an “ice taxi”.
Near the North Pole, the bad man and his companion find an igloo that has already been furnished at home. The bad man tries to fish with rather modest success, he and another angler hook their fishing lines together. In the end, the bad man meets his neighbor again and tries to seduce her by force (a parody of Erich von Stroheim's character in Foolish Women ), but is surprised by the woman's husband. A battle breaks out between the husband and the bad man. Apparently out of nowhere the wife of the bad man appears and shoots him. The bad man is now injured on the floor, but can still grab his pistol and aims at the husband ...
At that moment, Buster wakes up in the first row of seats in an empty movie theater, and the gun turns into a newspaper. Everything was just a dream.
background
The Frozen North is considered by many to be Buster Keaton's strangest short film. This is due, among other things, to the surrealistic gags in the film: Right at the beginning, you can see a subway station in Alaska; later you see an igloo that is miraculously fully furnished. The bad man's wife also seems to come out of nowhere at the end of the film. Keaton's work is actually more realism because he emphasized the importance of a serious plot and believable gags. Another exception to this principle is his feature film Sherlock, jr. from 1924 who also had surrealist gags - The Frozen North and Sherlock, Jr. but remain realistic insofar as at the end of both films Buster wakes up after a nap in the cinema and realizes that he only dreamed the plot. So the surrealistic, "fake" gags are always only part of the dream and not reality.
Buster Keaton deviates here from his usual, lovable film character: He plays a criminal who abuses women and does not shy away from robbery and murder. With this, Keaton parodies the westerns of William S. Hart , one of the most famous Hollywood stars of the time. One of the first scenes in the film shows the bad man using a Hart poster to outsmart the guests in a saloon. Hart is perfectly imitated by Keaton, for example in his trademark, the one-handed cigarette rolling, the thick glycerine tears and the serious, stoic facial expressions. The bad man's outfit is also reminiscent of that of Hart's film characters.
The background to this parody is serious, however: Keaton's friend and supporter Roscoe Arbuckle was accused of allegedly fatal rape of actress Virginia Rappe from 1921 onwards , as a result of which Arbuckle's career suffered great damage. Hart had turned out to be one of the sharpest critics in the press. Keaton's “revenge” on Hart in the form of a parody succeeded, the cinema viewers found the ridicule of Hart's films very funny and it was a success. William Hart took Keaton's parody badly and they didn't speak to each other for two years. Today Hart's films are largely forgotten, which is why today's viewers often have trouble identifying the parody.
In the scene in which the bad man tries to rape his neighbor, he changes his cowboy costume for that of an aristocrat in another surreal gag. This is an allusion to Erich von Stroheim's figure of the villainous Count in Foolish Women . Here, too, Keaton imitates Stroheim's facial expressions, who, however, found this parody very humorous.
The film was shot on Lake Donner near Truckee , California .
The film had its German premiere on May 20, 1926 in association with Daydreams under the common title Donnerwetter - Buster Keaton .
Web links
- In the far north in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Frozen North at busterkeaton.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ BusterKeaton.com ( Memento of the original from February 17, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Keaton, Eleanor and Vance, Jeffrey. Buster Keaton Remembered , HN Abrams, 2001, p. 95
- ↑ Michael Hanisch: About them laugh (t) en millions , Henschelverlag, Berlin, 1976, p. 208
