Three ages (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Three ages too : Ben Akiba lied! Did Ben Akiba lie? |
| Original title | Three Ages |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1923 |
| length | 63 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 0 |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Buster Keaton , Edward F. Cline |
| script | Clyde Bruckman , Joseph Mitchell , Jean Havez |
| production | Metro Pictures Corporation ; Producers: Joseph Schenck , Buster Keaton |
| camera | William C. McGann , Elgin Lessley |
| occupation | |
| |
Drei Zeitalter (Original title: Three Ages ) is the first full-length silent film comedy by Buster Keaton . The parody on Intolerance of David Wark Griffith was shot 1,923th
action
Love in the Stone Age , in ancient Rome and in the "modern age" (USA of the 1920s): In all three epochs, the feeble Buster has to fight for the relationship with his beautiful lover. The stories always follow the same pattern: Buster woos a girl, but is rejected by her parents because his rival is stronger (Stone Age), more powerful (ancient Rome) or richer (today).
The disappointed desperately seeks advice from fortune-tellers and love oracles , who also seem to turn against him. The attempt to arouse the jealousy of the girl, also fails: He is a Amazone thrown down the cliff, defeated by a Roman woman and a husband applied by a targeted blow almost ko beaten.
There is a direct fight between him and his rival, fought with clubs, as a chariot race , in an American football match. With clever ideas, Buster manages to emerge victorious, but is immediately the victim of an intrigue of the angry rival. He is tied with his feet first to the tail of a mammoth and thus dragged through the inhospitable area, thrown into the dungeon with the lion, handed over to the police as an alleged criminal against the law of prohibition .
With a bit of luck, Buster manages to escape from the situation threatening his existence. In order to help his - reciprocated - love to break through, he has to kidnap his beloved shortly before the wedding ceremony and get his rude rival out of the way by deliberately falling rocks, by collapsing the hall, by exposing himself as a convicted bigamist . After all these struggles, the couple in love can finally start a family.
background
Three Ages was inspired by DW Griffith's epic silent film masterpiece Intolerance - and is a comical answer to the tragic story of greed and power struggles that Griffith tells in the mirror of the ages of mankind.
Of the three most successful film comedians of their time, Buster Keaton was the last after Charles Chaplin and Harold Lloyd to switch from short films to full-length films. With Three Ages , he stayed true to the comic- style style of his short films. It wasn't until his following film, Our Hospitality , that he made credibility and drama his top priority . Nevertheless, the new, longer form was an experiment that could also be reversed if necessary: The three love stories in the three epochs could each have been converted into a classic short film.
style
"Impossible gags"
This was the last time Keaton used what he called "impossible gags" ( apart from the dream sequence in Sherlock, Jr. ) . Here are some examples:
- In the Stone Age, Buster climbed the head of a dinosaur to peer into the landscape. The scene was a tribute to Winsor McCay's cartoon Gertie the Dinosaur , which Buster Keaton had seen in the cinema as a teenager. Both buster and dinosaur are animated dolls using the stop-motion process.
- "Sunrise": An animated sun jumps out from behind the horizon onto the sky. He had already used this gag in the short film Buster Keaton's Wedding with Obstacles (1920).
- In the modern age, Buster drives his rickety automobile over a hill, whereupon the vehicle disintegrates into all its individual parts.
- Snow in the Colosseum : Buster turns his chariot into a sleigh. Instead of horses, he harnesses four huskies . In order to achieve a higher speed, Buster ties a cat to the end of a lance - and swings the cat from the chariot, clearly visible in front of the dogs.
Modern humor
Buster Keaton's silent films are often perceived as surprisingly modern by today's viewers. The final pointe of Three Ages can the reason for this particularly clear to illustrate: According intertitles should at the end of the three love stories - which ran virtually the same in all eras - the last proof be furnished to love that not change. We see Buster in the Stone Age when he comes out of the cave. Then his wife, followed by a band of about a dozen children. In ancient Rome, Buster strutted out of his patrician house . Then his wife, followed by about half a dozen children, who are neatly holding hands. In the modern age, Buster strolls out of his row house. Then his wife, followed by a little lap dog.
Stunts
When Buster is followed by the police, he wants to jump from the roof of a multi-story high-rise to the next. During the shoot, however, the jump fails, Keaton cannot hold on to the upper gutter and falls. In doing so, he sustains an injury. In order not to have to repeat the jump, a new stunt sequence was improvised for the film: Buster falls through some open awnings , but can finally cling to the vertical downpipe . But this loosens from the wall and bends down together with the buster, which is thrown through an open window of the fire brigade's ready room. He slides on the floor to the sliding pole and along it. Breathless, he sits down on the step of the fire engine, which drives off at that moment and stops in front of a smoking police station - the same one from which Buster was able to escape earlier. Buster Keaton said in a later interview that this impromptu sequence provoked the most laughs in performances.
Frames
The film was long considered lost . It was not until 1954 that a copy was discovered that, due to the decomposition of the nitrate film material, showed significant damage, was highly flammable and had to be painstakingly restored. To date, Three Ages is only available in this damaged version.
In 2005 the film was released on DVD with a soundtrack by techno DJ Jeff Mills .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Donald Crafton: Before Mickey. The Animated Film. 1898-1928. MIT Press, Cambridge MA et al. 1982, ISBN 0-262-03083-7 , p. 134.
Web links
- Three age in the Internet Movie Database (English)