Our Hospitality (1923)

Wonderful character development!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Buster Keaton finds himself in the middle of a family feud in this story, or at least his character Willie McKay does. The Hatfield and McCoys are replaced in the picture by the Canfield and McKays, and Willie unwittingly becomes involved by developing a soft spot for his train traveling partner, Virginia Canfield (Natalie Talmadge). Once again, Keaton's comic genius is on display with the situations he creates and the energy he puts into doing his own stunts and pratfalls. The 'log over the waterfall' sequence had to be one of the most daring and innovative types of scenes ever filmed back in the 1920's, and Willie's 'save' of Virginia as she's about to go over the falls is a masterstroke of timing and camera work. I also got a big kick out of the scene in which a Blue Ridge Mountain hillbilly pelted stones at the west-bound train with the conductor retaliating by throwing pieces of firewood lumber back at him. That was a crafty way of stocking the fireplace back home with virtually none of the work!The best however is probably the rail switch that separates the train cars from the locomotive and how they bob and weave their way down the track before hooking up again. I don't know if Keaton had a penchant for trains, but one figures prominently here just as in one of his greatest feature length films, "The General". Fortunately, Keaton's McKay is able to make peace with the Canfield clan by the end of the story, closing out with yet another effective sight gag. As the Canfield father and sons lay down their weapons, Willie manages to set down close to a dozen of his own!

Acknowledgement: Most of the following has been taken or adapted from the 2017 New Zealand International Film Festival catalog.Now this is the oddest review I have ever written, as I've yet to see the film. As part of the 2017 New Zealand International Film Festival, Our Hospitality is screening on a giant screen at the Isaac Theatre, Christchurch, New Zealand on Sunday 20 August, 2017 at 2pm. Carl Davis' orchestral score, commissioned by Thames Television for Channel 4, UK is to be performed live by the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra. Overseas film buffs, book your flights and tickets to the show now. The restoration of Our Hospitality is part of the Keaton Project, launched in 2015 by Cinetica di Bologna and The Cohen Film Collection.As for my rating of 10/10, well, I'm prescient...Peter Hallinan

It's about 1810. The Canfields and the McKays are feuding clans. John McKay is killed and his wife moves with her infant son Willie to NYC to live with her sister. After his mother's death, Willie (Buster Keaton) is raised by his aunt without any knowledge of the feud. He returns to Rockville to reclaim his inheritance. He meets Virginia Canfield (Natalie Talmadge, Buster's real-life wife) on the train. She invites him over as her family keeps trying to kill him.The rickety old train is fascinating and extremely cool. The story is fun. The family trying to kill him is pretty funny especially when he figures it out. Keaton being scared is hilarious. There are some good stunts. There are some that seem much more dangerous than exciting. Then there is the waterfall dumping on him. The rock climbing looks scary especially when they're not on a set. There is a terrific waterfall rescue at the end that is more in line with an expert trapeze act. The movie has some fun and lots of stunts which is the hallmark of Keaton.

After 'Three Ages (1923)' proved that he could direct a feature-length comedy {he had merely starred in 'The Saphead (1920)'}, Buster Keaton followed up its success with 'Our Hospitality (1923),' a film that set the mould for the type of films that he would continue to produce for the remainder of his time at United Artists. Keaton plays the polite and well-meaning dolt, incredibly naive to a point, but, when roused into action, he has all the determination, daring and agility of a circus performer. Natalie Talmadge, as the pretty and delicate Virginia Canfield, provides the necessary romantic subplot, just enough to please, without saturating the story's more exciting elements. The overwhelmingly-quirky comedy is rarely laugh-out-loud hilarious, but there's a certain quaintness and modesty to the material that really works, communicated most noticeably through Keaton's characteristically-underplayed slapstick performance. Silent comedians often compensated for the absence of sound by grossly exaggerating every expression and gesture; Keaton, on the other hand, reacts to each new obstacle with the solemnity of a monk, his inconceivable deadpan passiveness somehow amplifying the humour.It probably wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that 'Our Hospitality' was originally conceived to accommodate Keaton's passion for locomotives, and he was able to indulge in the construction of a working Stephenson's Rocket – an early steam train with a 0-2-2 wheel arrangement. This petite little locomotive provides some of the film's most memorable comedic moments, most of the enjoyment derived from low-key, episodic sight gags, whether it be Buster trying to wear his top hat in the cramped carriage, the dog that is continually in pursuit, the back wheels that roll loose, the donkey blocking the tracks, or the tracks themselves, which determinedly follow the contours of the earth with precarious rigidity. Though this little train scarcely travels at a walking pace, some of the techniques that Keaton developed here would come in handy four years later, when he filmed his Civil War train epic, 'The General (1927).' The remainder of the film is a sharp comedy-of-manners, as the wealthy Canfield family plots to murder Keaton's Willie McKay, the culmination of a generations-long feud between the two warring lineages.Production took place from a screenplay by Clyde Bruckman, Jean C. Havez and Joseph A. Mitchell, and the writers aim a few good-natured digs at the American South. The family feud, which is continued throughout the decades despite the fact that nobody remembers how it began, sounds too ludicrous to be true, but I was surprised to learn of a firm grounding in fact – the story was, indeed, based on the bloody real-life feud between the Hatfield and McCoy families. Paradoxically, the film also celebrates the indomitable "Southern hospitality" of the local folk, and the Canfield family (led by Keaton-regular Joe Roberts, in his final role) grudgingly agrees to only shoot their hapless enemy once he has left the cover of their home and so has ceased to be their guest. As one might expect, Buster Keaton risked his neck on more than a few occasions, the most unforgettable stunt involving his dangling precariously from a log perched at the crest of a waterfall, and his daring acrobatic rescue of the beautiful damsel-in-distress. Talmadge may have been replaced by a dummy, but Keaton was there, as always, in the flesh.