Keaton's Silent Shorts: Beyond the Laughter

Chapter 19: The Balloonatic

OIaplcr19 TheBalloonatic (January 1923) Courtesy of dIC Museum of Modern Art/film Still$ .....chivc ONCEUPON A TIME "rrIERE LIVED A YOUNG PRINCE WHO SEEMED TO BE IN TROUBLE. With the first four magical words of this title, The Balloonatic becomes a fairy tale. T his is not a particularlycomfortable genre for Keatoni he has experienced too much "reality" since Cops to be so naively immersed in whimsy alone. But the fairy talc, like the dream, is Keaton's license to play at fantasies The Balloonatic without a penalty for surviving them. The Balloonatic, then, is a dream film without a dream-frame. It is also a weak film, floundering for a foothold in either fantasy or reality, and it is a film that Keaton himself hardly ever mentioned. But in the wake ofseveral sobering films in a row, Keaton now presents a welcome fling. Buster the child/man has been given a reprieve from Life to romp through its forest primeval, free, wide awake, seeking a distant land wherein lies some longed-for happy kingdom . Setting a lighthearted adventurous mood, the opening line is immediately followed by a matching title that presents the vital counterpart to every fairy-tale prince: THERE ALSO LIVED A YOUNG PRINCESS WHO WAS FOND OF OUTDOOR ADVENTURE (PHYLLIS HAVER). Already thePrince's questis inextricably tied to a potential love interest-Buster's eternal source of both frustration and joy. Given his quest for Woman and the nature of fairy tales, there can seldom be a prince without a princess. The opening shot is immediately involving in its unusual composition : it is almost the inverse of the stunning shot in The Goat of Buster's round porkpie. Now we look closely at the supple roundness of his porkpie again, his "crown" identifying his rank among peers. After a pause, Buster raises his head to face us, inviting us into his thoughts with a rare close-up. His features are illuminated by the lit match he holds as he surveys the surrounding darkness. When he blows out the light, his pale face continues to "glow." Buster is confronted with choices, represented by different shadowy doors behind which lie mysteries. We think of "the lady or the tiger" dilemma-the frightening moment of making a fateful decision that either enriches or ends one's life by simply opening a door. When Buster opens one door, he hurriedly slams it shut when the "wrong prize" appears, then runs to another, only to find a greater threat: first a skeleton, then a roomful of fog. By slamming the door, he tries to thwart disaster and stop the entity dead in its tracks. Before Buster opens his third choice of sliding doors, he arms himself with a handy white statue. Surprise: a dragon lunges forward, flapping its hungry tongue. Is this the dragon that the "Prince" has come to slay? Buster only drops his plaster weapon and slides/rolls onto his stomach to stare at the closing doors. Without winning a prize, Buster strikes out-falling through an unexpected trapdoor. Cut to exterior: we learn that all of these shots add up to a "revelation" sequence explaining exactly what "trouble" Buster is in. Filling the screen in an extreme long shot is a fun-house facade named HOUSE OF TROUBLE. A 313 The Balloonatic ticket booth, with a peripheral sign inviting GET INTO TROUBLE IO CENTS, stands center in a gaping black void, from which Buster suddenly slides out to land with an unprincely thud. This revelatory sequence has been a Keaton surprise, based on a principle of comedy that he articulated in a 1930 interview: "The best way to get a laugh is to create a genuine thrill and then relieve the tension with comedy. Getting laughs depends on the element of surprise; and surprises are harder and harder to get as audiences , seeing more pictures, become more and more comedy-wise. But when you take a genuine thrill, build up to it, and then turn it into a ridiculous situation, you always get that surprise element.,,1 The tension began building with each of Buster's rapid-fire encounters in the dark. The final surprise, arising from a "ridiculous situation, " hit us when we learned that Buster was not in a dream or a haunted house but an amuscment park fun house, which he voluntarily entered for a dime's worth of "trouble." Although the revelation now...