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Griffith's "Sun Play of the Ages" is the parodic basis, scythe and hourglass and all, though the curving and jagged storylines also suggest something of Duchamp's 3 Standard Stoppages. A romantic triangle thrice repeated to show "beauty is part of yesterday, today, and forever," and to provide Buster Keaton with a canvas for his inventions. He enters prehistoric times between Winsor McCay and Willis O'Brien atop a stop-motion brontosaurus, spots the comely cave-dweller (Margaret Leahy) and runs to declare his love, a beefy troglodyte (Wallace Beery) beats him to it. If in the Stone Age the father (Joe Roberts) contemplates potential sons-in-law by applying club to cranium, in ancient Rome it is a matter of standing: "Thou rankest highest in the Roman army," he tells Beery's centurion before turning to Keaton's runty soldier, "and thou art the rankest!" The shift to modern day caps the evolution from dinosaur to jalopy, the matriarch (Lillian Lawrence) picks the maiden's suitor by comparing bank accounts, as befits the age of "speed, need, and greed." The filmic treatment is fleet and varied—the hero up close at the restaurant, struggling to mime romantic bravado after being emboldened by a gulp of contraband gin, then later a zipping long-shot figure with a surprising bit of Samson in him. Sled races in a snow-covered Colosseum ahead of Ben Hur, Ouija tortoises and wristband sundials (cp. Hawks' Fig Leaves), Shaw's lion appreciates a manicure. The format is still skit-like but the chases already point to Keaton's sense of comic architecture, and there's at least one magical gag: When the little caveman tries the drag-mate-by-hair routine on a disinterested giantess and gets knocked into a pond, he tumbles in slow-motion, blowing a kiss to the camera. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |