Le crime de Malec

Buster Keaton is walking past a jail when he grabs the bars and peers inside. On the other side of the bars is notorious murderer "Dead Shot Dan" who is being photographed. Seeing that Keaton is behind him, Dan ducks out of shot and once he escapes, a photo of Keaton, seemly behind bars is published. As a result of this Keaton is forced to go on the run from various police officers including a persistent Police Chief who just won't give up.

I watch a lot of Silent Comedy but if I had to ask someone to watch just one short silent picture it may well be this one. The Goat is packed full of wonderful jokes, ingenious set ups and incredible stunt work. I laughed more at twenty seven minutes of this film than I have during probably every comedy I've seen so far this year combined.

What makes this film so great is the sheer quantity and quality of gags. While essentially a chase comedy, this is to the Keystone Cops what BBC4 is to ITV2. Sure they have similarities, but one is far more sophisticated that the other. Keaton seems to find endless possibilities in places to hide and ways of escape, only to have them backfire on him. The way that the gags join together feels effortless. Nothing about the film feels forced despite the huge number of jokes and stunts. Keaton never creates a tenuous link from one to another, the whole film feels smooth and calculated while remaining frantic and fast paced.

As well as being incredibly funny, this is also quite surreal in places, in keeping with Keaton's cannon. Some of the more surreal moments include a clay horse melting under Keaton's weight and perhaps one of Keaton's most famous scenes in which a train approaches from the distance and stops immediately in front of the camera showing Keaton, stone faced, riding the cow catcher. This isn't really played for laughs but you laugh at the audacity of the shot. Perhaps the most surreal scene involves an elevator chase in which Keaton and the Police Chief (Joe Roberts) are involved in a chase through an apartment block. Keaton manipulates the mechanical elevator floor indicator to his advantage (even though this wouldn't really effect where the elevator was) and by pulling it hard and past the top floor Keaton forces the elevator out of the roof. The scene is like a cross between Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and something Terry Gilliam would produce. It's a wonderfully clever and funny scene.

Something else that stands out, as with any Keaton picture, is the star's athleticism and gymnastic abilities. It sometimes seems as though Keaton is made of rubber as he jumps, falls, stretches and squeezes with ease both in and out of trouble. Keaton, who once broke his neck during a film (and didn't realise until years later when he had an x-ray) was never afraid to put himself in harms way and that is certainly true here. In The Goat he can be seen jumping through windows and off vehicles, sliding down elevator shafts and falling of a variety of apparatus. During all of this his expression never changes.

To call The Goat a masterpiece would be no exaggeration. It is easily amongst the greatest silent shorts of the 1920s and amongst Keaton's best work. The humour, timing and plot don't feel out of place today. It's the sort of film that you'll be afraid to look away from for just a second or two in case you miss a gag or glance. This is comedic perfection.

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The comments on this page attesting to the genius of this film are all on target. After more than eighty years, it's still fresh; last year's Hollywood comedies are stale by comparison. I was lucky enough to see this screened at Webster University with a live, contemporary soundtrack performed by the After Quartet. Not only did these guys do a first rate job, but it made me realize how liberating it is for the classics of silent film to be performed without a hokey, melodramatic "style pianola" soundtrack.

'The Goat' is the one with the shot of a train coming right at the camera, and stopping just as it reaches the viewer with Buster sitting there on the cowcatcher, which is simply marvelous (it's at about the 9:05 point). He's running from the police because he accidentally hit one with a horseshoe (fleeing from just three of them here, unlike the horde in the following year's film, Cops), and he's running from a guy trying to collect a reward, having been mistaken for the notorious killer 'Dead Shot Dan.'

There are lots of clever moments here, including Buster being dragged on his belly by a car, ingeniously catching three cops in the back of a truck, hiding behind a burly traffic cop by standing behind him and making the same arm motions, and hopping on a table and leapfrogging over a guy's head to dive through a transom window. He shows his prowess with trains, something we'd certainly see later in his career, by climbing to the roof of one as it chugs along and unhooking the car containing the police. He jumps into what he thinks is the spare tire of a car about to drive off, thinking he will make his getaway, only to find it's part of sign advertising Vulcanizing. My favorite bit was at the end though, with the chase up and down the stairs and the elevator manipulation - Buster controls it by climbing up and moving the dial saying what floor it's on, you see.

Keaton's extraordinary physical comedy was highly influential to cartoonists like Chuck Jones and comedians like Lucille Ball among countless others, and it's very easy to see that in this film. It may not have his very best material, but the pace is great and there is quite of variety, making it a lot of fun. The title seems to be short for 'scapegoat' since that's what the character ends up being, but I like to think of it as The GOAT, the Greatest of All Time, because that's what Keaton surely is.

Having missed out on the bread line, Buster accidentally gets his photograph taken by mistake by a man taking a photo of notorious criminal Dead Shot Dan. When Dan escapes, Buster finds himself mistakenly identified as the dangerous wanted man and even when he flees the police to another town, wanted posters are already ahead of him and he finds his troubles are only beginning.

BBC4 has just started a series with Paul Merton on silent comedy heroes and his first subject was Buster Keaton. The programme itself was an interesting mix of clips but the real gold was in the fact that it brought this short film in its entirety to primetime television (albeit on a small digital channel). The short opens with an unlikely setup but quickly gets past it by virtue of the sheer quality inherent in the comedy rather than the story-telling, which, being honest, is what we've come here for. True to form the comedy is creative and slightly surreal with a great mix of slapstick and wit. I found myself laughing out loud even though I wasn't really in the mood for comedy (I was more in the mood for Solaris, which I watched later the same evening).

Keaton is on great form and does so much while keeping a straight face; those who dismiss his performances as just falling down simply have no idea what they are talking about and I wish them well as they watch their next crude teen comedy at their multiplex. His support cast are good in regards their physical performances but some of them really overdo their face movements – not so much on the double takes (which need impact) but more on the other aspects where they appear hammy. Of course playing opposite Keaton even Mount Rushmore could be accused of overdoing the facial movements, such is his way.

Overall a great little short with an unlikely plot that is more than covered up by a hilarious and inspired onslaught of physical comedy delivered with skill, imagination and wit.

I hardly know where to begin in writing about this gem, except to say that it represents young Buster Keaton at the peak of his powers and must certainly rank with the half-dozen best short comedies ever made. The Goat is twenty minutes of smoothly paced, expertly photographed, beautifully executed gags; two reels of non-stop comic invention driven by an intense undercurrent of paranoia and yet somehow leading to a happy ending -- which wasn't always the way with Buster's short comedies. (See Cops for one case where Fatalism ultimately got the better of him, or One Week for the victory of Defeatism.) If I had to describe the tone of this film in one word I'd call it "effortless," but if I were permitted a qualifier I'd call it "seemingly effortless," for surely a lot of hard labor goes into the making of any comic opus that unfolds with such sublime ease. Still, they didn't call him the Great Stone Face for nothing: Buster never let the public see him sweat.

A sardonic title card tells us that our opening sequence is set "along Millionaires' Row," i.e. on a bread line in a grim urban setting, where Buster waits patiently at the back of the line and, as a result, doesn't get fed. But it needs to be emphasized that not for one moment does he play for pathos; Buster has our sympathy, but he never asks for it. Before long, through a series of accidents, coincidences and absurd misunderstandings, Buster is believed to be an escaped killer named Dead Shot Dan and is being pursued by every cop for miles around, and yet while he's clearly dismayed by this turn of events there is never a hint of self-pity or even surprise. We get the sense he always knew that this is what life would have in store for him, and that he hasn't time to feel sorry for himself anyway, as he has to figure out new ways to dodge all those cops and escape from the latest trap.

Just as Buster refrains from playing for sympathy he never seems to strain for laughs either, which is especially impressive because The Goat must be one of the most laugh-packed short comedies in existence. This is the film containing that iconic shot of Buster riding a train's cow-catcher right up to the very lens of the camera, which isn't a gag exactly but sure is laugh-provoking in its own strange way. Meanwhile, there are bits involving guns, dogs, cops, an incredibly furry mustache, and a clay statue of a horse that melts under Buster's weight (a surreal sight indeed), but some of the biggest boffos are saved for the finale when Buster is trying to elude his primary nemesis, Big Joe Roberts, a rotund cop who also happens to be the father of leading lady Virginia Fox. Trapped in Big Joe's dining room, Buster leap-frogs over him and sails through a transom, turns a phone-booth into an elevator and pretends to disappear, and eventually uses the elevator itself to rid himself of his pursuer and win the girl in time for one last fade-out gag.

To say more would be a disservice to first-time viewers. I only wish I could see this film in a theater full of people who'd never seen it before, and float on the laughter. Live musical accompaniment would be nice too; and incidentally the musical score supplied by Kino for their home video/DVD version of The Goat is first-rate, serving as icing on an already tasty cake.