Keaton's Silent Shorts: Beyond the Laughter

Chapter 16: The Frozen North

[baplertl TheFrozenNorth (August 1922) Courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art/ Film Stills !r.rchiYl' K eaton escaped tlte bustle of the Talmadge household to film The Frozen North on location in the High Sierra {where he would also film Our Hospitality and the underwater sequences of The Navigator} ,lOne reviewer stressed its wintry setting by calling The Frozen North "a broad burlesque 011 the prevailing 'snow' picture" of the time.2 Burlesque, unadulterated parody, giant in-joke-a11are apt Ilames for this unusual short that expands the"spoofery" that 258 TheFrozen North Keaton has to this point only inserted in small doses into The Blacksmith and The Playhouse. Here, he revolves the entire film around that comic form. Keaton spoofs three silent-screen contemporaries, each with easily recognizable features that became their trademarks: William S. Hart, Theda Bara, and Erich von Stroheim. A little Ben Turpin is thrown in, and because of the locale, there are echoes of Nanook if the North, the "father" of the film documentary. As imaginative as The Frozen North is, with many memorable scenes hinging on the surreal, it is a film that lacks overall consistency and energy. Above all, because Buster absorbs the idiosyncracies ofother characters into himself, the film misses the one driving force that should give it depth and anchorage: the "little man" figure against the world. LAST STOP ON THE SUBWAY. Aniris opens on asubway kiosk in the middle of snow country. Buster, in knee-high boots, long fur coat, and porkpie punched out to look like a Mountie's hat with a string tie, swaggers out boldly to center foreground. He pauses and turns, revealing (in medium close-up) his socks clothespinned to a laundry line draped across his back. He continues walking toward us and out. Keaton instantly presents absurd sight gags that parody the hardy life of the outdoors law enforcer: Buster comes to work in the woods via urban transportation. Keaton also picks the silliest laundry items to adorn his back for visual amusement. He will continue to hang out and dry, so to speak, the simplest images that constitute a whole genre-in this case, Western and "Yukon" pictures-and twist their basest, most incongruous forms into sight-gag burlesques of what is otherwise serious and dramatic. Buster approaches a saloon, the main site of "civilization" in the wilderness and the anticipated landmark of every Western. He stops short at the window and, in a reverse interior shot that frames Buster leaning on the sill, we see a man operating a roulette wheel. Suddenly Buster scratches his left palm-a superstition of impending fortune. As a variation on one ofhis trademarks (a self-spoof perhaps), Buster puts his hands on his holsters instead of his hips. Peripheral information is conveyed through the odd advertisement of a life-sized bandit, a bandanna over his mouth, suggesting that professional bandits USE BULL's EYE AMMUNITION . The poster gives Buster an idea; he sets his clothesline on a snowpile and begins to cut out the bandit with a dagger. Keaton records Buster's every move as he places the cutout at the window and juxtaposes that action to the dancing and drinking of the saloon patrons. Buster ducks behind the figure as he shouts "HANDS up!" 251 TheFrozen Nort:h In an interior long shot that directs our vision to the bandit in the window through the crowd, Buster confers with his "buddy" and swaggers in to collect guns and loot. Thus, Buster dispels his earlier image of a Yukon law officer for one of a snow rustler, even though this latter "career" was spontaneously chosen when he spied the gambling room. To be convincing , Buster yells out his plans to the bandit as everyone stands petrified. One fearless man, happily drunk, swipes at the board to find the gun is flat; he stares into the paper nozzle, then pulls the cutout in through the window. As he counts his money, Buster is slowly surrounded, visually trapped and diminished, by angry gamblers and his cardboard comrade. He stares, he thinks, he dumps the money on the table and pushes it away as if he cannot imagine how it got there. He tips his hat, heading for the exit; the patrons assist by pitching him headfirst out the window into the snow. He abruptly sits up, stares at the saloon, and staggers around the corner. The best...