Cops (1922)

People are voting emotionally.

Excellent but underrated film

Blistering performances.

The acting in this movie is really good.

A series of mishaps manages to make a young man get chased by a big city's entire police force.This is not my favorite Keaton film, or even my favorite Keaton short. It is not quite on the level of "One Week", for example. But it still has some of those great physical gags that Keaton was known for (the see-saw on the fence is vintage Keaton).There is some question over whether or not the dynamite is a reference to Harold Lloyd. I have my doubts on that, but who knows? Either way it is interesting to have an anarchist in the plot. Audiences today (2015) may not fully appreciate how ubiquitous stories of anarchists were when this film came out, and it was actually a timely joke.

Buster Keaton has certainly caused a lot of mayhem in his films, but getting the entire police force of a huge city against him is a first, even for him. This is exactly what happens in "Cops", s silent black-and-white comedy film from 1922. At this point, the end of Buster Keaton's short film career wasn't really far anymore and the end of the careers of Joe Roberts and Virginia Fox wasn't too far anymore either. Keaton wrote and directed this film together with Edward F. Cline, his longtime collaborator and Cline, as almost always, plays a minor character in here again as well. The huge star, however, is Keaton again. Sadly, the action and comedy in this film was not great enough to keep me interested. The ending was interesting though as you don't see such that frequently in films, especially back in the 1910s and 1920s, but it certainly added a bit of the "sad" factor to Keaton's movies in general. However, I do not recommend "Cops". I cannot really see why this was inducted in the National Film Registry.

When I read about "Cops", I got led to believe that the whole movie was a giant chase scene. It turns out that the chase is mostly confined to the last couple of minutes. But those last couple of minutes are pretty wacky! In this case, Buster Keaton tries to find a job but accidentally steals some money and causes a massive police chase. I can imagine that they probably had some fun filming some of the scenes.I actually got the feeling that this movie may have been a semi-sequel to Keaton's previous movie "The Playhouse", in which he and the woman look like they're running off to get married at the end. This one begins with her telling him to get a job or she won't marry him.Whether or not it was, this is still a pretty funny movie.

This seems to be Buster Keaton's most popular short film. I prefer his films with more cinematically based comedy, such as in "The Playhouse", "The Frozen North" and "Sherlock, Jr.", but "Cops" is a very entertaining little film. It features a large comedic chase--chases, especially involving policemen, being one of the most regularly reoccurring devices in Keaton's oeuvre, especially in his two-reelers. Cops chased Keaton in "Convict 13", "Neighbors", "Hard Luck", "The Goat" and--in an escalated chase very similar to that in "Cops"--"Daydreams". My favorite Keaton chase, by the way, is the chase of the brides in "Seven Chances".The comedic chase has a long cinema tradition, perhaps dating back to James Williamson's "Stop Thief!" (1901) or "Chinese Laundry Scene" (1895), the latter of which was based on a vaudeville act. Then, there were the Pathé comedies and those of Mack Sennett's Keystone, which were greatly derived from them. Keaton came from vaudeville and worked under one of the premiere early comedians, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, to begin his on screen career, so he was fully immersed in this tradition.In "Cops", there are some good visual jokes that rely on film technique, such as following a close shot of Keaton behind bars with a reverse long shot that clarifies the opening scene. Keaton's mechanical inventiveness is demonstrated during the horse carriage sequence. And, there's plenty of physical comedy during the great chase finale. Keaton's sense of matured, restrained comedy is also important here, which is perhaps best characterized by his retained stoic expression throughout any chaotic misadventure. "Cops" is rather representative of Keaton's refined sense of what's funny and of his advanced understanding of film-making.