Film Friday: Buster Keaton's 'Seven Chances'

This column has covered Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin, so now it's time to look at the third man in the trio of the great silent comics: Buster Keaton. He was the most physical of the three and possibly the best at sight gags. Whether it's standing in the right spot when a building falls apart, sitting at the front of a train engine or walking straight into the silver screen, Keaton mastered the technology available to him to get audiences roaring in laughter. The 'Great Stone Face' was much more than that, crafting multiple masterpieces as Chaplin began slowing his pace in the 1920s.

Keaton's best-known film is The General, his Civil War epic comedy, but among his funniest is 1925's Seven Chances. This is Keaton at his most free, letting the comedy do the talking to put together the simple story of a man who just wants to marry the girl he loves (and earn $7 million along the way).

In Seven Chances, Keaton stars as Jimmy Shannon, the junior partner of a brokerage firm. He was always too shy to tell his sweetheart Mary (Ruth Dwyer) that he loved her, so he's still a bachelor on the day of his 27th birthday. Unfortunately, this is a problem, since he's just learned that he will inherit $7 million, but only if he gets married by 7 p.m. the day he turns 27. Jimmy is sure that he's now ready to propose to Mary, but he bungles his words and convinces her that he's only marrying her so he can earn the money, not because he genuinely loves her. She declines, although unbeknownst to Jimmy, her mother convinces her otherwise.

Now that he's botched his easy route, Jimmy, his partner (T. Roy Barnes) and his lawyer (Snitz Edwards – yes, the actor's first name is Snitz) have to find ways to get Jimmy a wife. At first, he proposes to seven random women at a country club, then he just begins proposing to anyone (including a receptionist played by an uncredited, very young Jean Arthur). But the partner and lawyer decide to put an ad in the paper, telling women to rush to a church to marry a millionaire, which sparks the funniest bride run in movies.

That's the entire plot of the film (almost... I won't give away the end), which runs just under an hour. Seven Chances' brevity means that there's little time for the viewer to get prepared for the next laugh. Every aspect of this film is built to make you chuckle, starting from the perfectly written inter-titles during the two-strip Technicolor opening. And what makes Seven Chances so brilliant is that it has more than just one moment. There's the terrible ways Jimmy proposes to women at the country club and there's the brides chasing him through Los Angeles. The classic Keaton moment in the film comes when he's rolling down a mountain with rocks falling behind him – there's even a big boulder, proving that Keaton could outrun Indiana Jones.

What made Keaton so great was that face of his, which really explained the hilarious situations he put himself in. There's a moment when he walks out of a backstage door because he thinks he can propose to the actress. Two seconds later, he walks out with a black eye, his trademark hat smashed over his head and he takes his money back from the doorman. His face says it all - “You don't want to know what happened in there.” It's a skill that only works in silent film and no one did it as well as Keaton.

On Home Video: Kino Lorber has released all of Keaton's films on Blu-ray, which is certainly impressive. Seven Chances was released in 2011 and features a wealth of great extras, including a 1904 Thomas Edison short that has a plot that's similar to the film. There's also features that cover the Technicolor sequence and give a tour of Los Angeles circa 1925. Kino also has the film streaming on Netflix and it's available on YouTube.

Seven Chances is hilarious and one of Keaton's best films. If you're looking for a quick laugh, pulled off with genius technique, this is it. And it feels great to know that the same gags that made audiences laugh 88 years ago work today.

You can talk about this film and others at the Film Friday Facebook page. You can check out past Film Friday columns here.

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