Keaton's Silent Shorts: Beyond the Laughter

Chapter 7: Hard Luck

OIapltrl Hard Luck (March 1921) Courl('Sy of lhe AcadelllY of Motion Picture Ans :and Scicnc;cs Er the fi~t time in more tbnn sixty-five years since its release in 1921, Hard Luck was screened at the Biograph Theatre in New York City. Before his death, Raymond Rohauer had located the fragments of this "lost" film in European vaults and, with David Gill and Kevin BrownlowofThamcs Television in London, 82 HardLuck reconstructed all but the final few minutes of this two-reeler. The last gag, missing except for stills from the film, was dubbed in a 1959 Coronet article as "The Biggest Laugh in Movie History.,,1 Keaton called the comedy "the biggest one I ever made,,,2 and because of the last gag, "audiences used to go out of the theater howling."3 With such a response, no wonder Hard Luck was reported to be Keaton's favorite short.4 Hard Luck provides a unique, previously unrevealed, facet in the Buster persona, which might have especially endeared this film to Keaton . The opening titles establish Buster's bizarre solution to his not-sobizarre dilemmas: FIRED FROM HIS JOB, JILTED BY HIS GIRL, DOWN ON HIS LUCK, ... ONLY ONE THING LEFT TO DO. The titles themselves instantly suggest the solution: Buster's suicide. The curveballs of Fate have finally driven the lad over the brink. We wonder where his resilience has gone. But we remember Buster's destiny: that however he chooses to respond to a predicament, the end result will often be the opposite of bis desire. Committing suicide will probably be so frustrating that Buster will decide to end it all and live. The beginning of the film chronicles Buster's futile attempts to yield to his miserable fate. Buster's first effo'rt is foiled when he lies in front of a trolley car, curled up like a baby; the trolley stops inches from him. Next, LOWERING" A SAFE-A FITTING END. Seeing two men hoist a safe to an upper floor, Buster cuts the rope but misses the safe by inches and incenses the two men in the process. Buster tries hanging himself from a tree in a zoo and creates an extended routine in which Keaton plays with space and symmetry . As Buster becomes increasingly frustrated, his gags become more intricate in variation and composition, enhancing the sight-gag potential of his actions. Buster not only falls off the branch but pulls himself up to it by the noose from which he hopes to hang. The branch drops when Buster drops, splitting the frame horizontally and vertically. Buster fails in his mission and attracts the guards' attention. When they chase him, Buster suddenly flees to save himself; suicide is momentarily abandoned when outside forces deprive him of his free choice to end it all. Buster blends in with the life-sized statues of a soldier's monument as the guards pass. (A similar gag, with a slightly different motive, resurfaces in The Goat [1921], when Buster merges with a sculpture to evade his pursuers.) Buster's energy to kill himself is waning now that his energy to survive is recharged. He walks a fine line between succumbing to life's imposed "tragedies" and resisting the forces that create those tragedies; he is really caught betwixt the devil and the deep blue sea. Curiously, Buster's 83 HardLuck next suicide attempt is an allusion to this dichotomy as well as a strong sight gag. NIGHT FALLS-HE WANTS TO DO THE SAME. Under the cloak of darkness, Buster leaps before two onrushing headlights, prepared to be run over. The two headlights separate as they are the single headlights of two motorcycles that pass Buster on either side. Foiled again, Buster ponders another option and, en route, fleetingly considers a manicure. Keaton speaks tongue-in-cheek, ofcourse, as hejuxtaposes this peripheral distraction with his hero's quest for suicide. Buster is contemplating both death's solace and life's little pleasures-and he opts for the latter. Buster will shortly give up on suicide altogether and, in fact, adopt a nearly sardonic, self-serving philosophy based on the film's "hard luck" theme. (Keaton presents pessimistic views of his persona's struggles in life in the 1922 shorts Cops and Daydreams. Yet because these films begin optimistically and end with Buster's failures, Cops and Daydreams are truly tragic comedies; in Hard Luck...