Did Buster Keaton ever work with Mack Sennett? Short answer, yes. THE TIMID YOUNG MAN is their sole collaboration. A lot of people think they worked together in the silent era, but it never happened. Keaton debuted with Arbuckle and by this time, Arbuckle had left Sennett and was with Paramount. It took until 1935 for their paths to finally cross when neither man was in his prime. Sennett's studio closed down two years earlier in 1933 after starting up in 1912. A couple of years later, Sennett went to Educational to produce and direct two shorts, this being the first, the second being a Joan Davis short which had Buster's mom and sister in it. They would be the last two films Sennett would ever do, so we're watching the end of a highly influential and fruitful career this week in the producer and director department.
It's sad Keaton and Sennett didn't get to work together with time and a budget. Both men in the twenties were the masters of spectacle, especially Sennett when it came to cars. So many wonderful car chases and crashes in Sennett's shorts, and we have the opportunity for it here twice, yet a lack of time and budget does them in. First is when Keaton and Tiny Sanford go head to head with their cars on the dirt cliff road. No doubt somebody has to go down, and indeed Sanford does. All we get, though, is three awkward, jumpy edits where we basically see Sanford stuck on the bottom. In Sennett's heyday, that fall would have been an awesome crash much better filmed. A dirt cliff road and a car screams Sennett, but Sennett had to have been frustrated with his limited resources here. Same with the ending. Keaton has to bump his car into five or six other cars in front of him to push them out of the way to get to his girl. In the twenties, that would have been a multi car pile up for the ages. Here, it's one shot from behind that ends suddenly without a whimper. A shame their sense of wit and spectacle didn't get the proper airing it deserved with these car sequences.
We get Lona Andre as the girl this week. She's just OK until the second reel, when she wears a bathing suit. She puts the beauty in bathing beauty, no doubt why she was there. Mack Sennett had a few girls in bathing suits appear in films during his day
Well, there's one Sennett tradition continued, though with a bigger budget there'd be more of them, and they'd be on a beach playing baseball or volleyball or something.
For a Buster perspective, the best scene is definitely the catching fish with jumping beans bit, incredibly clever, funny, and worthy of Buster. There's some slight pantomime moments too worth catching, like the way he eyes Ms. Andre while leaning his body weight on the chair or when he jumps through the raft when he has water thrown on him in bed.
Tiny Sanford's character is about as Harvey Weinstein like as one can be in a code film, and Kitty McHugh is pleasantly battle ax like in her scenes. No Al Thompson this week.
A very interesting and historical film that has its moments, it's just a shame this wasn't made ten years earlier....it would have been so much better. Also amazing to think after all my reviews, this is the first time I've ever gotten to Mack Sennett.
