The Goat (Buster Keaton, 1921)

Buster Keaton and Virginia Fox on the poster for The Goat (1921). Photo: Internet Movie Database.

Syntipukki / Syndabocken / Pulmallisessa asemassa / Malec l'insaisissable.
    US 1921. PC: Joseph M. Schenck Productions / Buster Keaton Productions. Original distributor: Metro Pictures Corporation. P: Joseph M. Schenck. D+SC: Buster Keaton, Malcolm St. Clair. Cin: Elgin Lessley – 35 mm – b&w – 1,37:1 – silent with English intertitles. Technical D: Fred Gabourie.
    C: Buster Keaton (The Goat), Virginia Fox (the police chief's daughter), Joe Roberts (Police Chief), Malcolm St. Clair (Dead Shot Dan), Edward F. Cline (cop by telephone pole), Jean C. Havez, Kitty Bradbury, Joe Keaton, Louise Keaton, Myra Keaton.
    Loc: Los Angeles (914 S. Alvarado Street, Inglewood Train Station).
    23 min
    US premiere: 18 May 1921 – distributor: Metro Pictures.
    Helsinki premiere: 10 May 1923 Apollo – released by Adams Filmi Oy.
    Robert Israel composed the score for the 1995 re-release.
    Lobster Films restoration (2015) with a Mont Alto Orchestra music compilation.
    Corona lockdown viewings.
    Lobster Films 2015 restoration viewed at home, Helsinki, 16 May 2020.

AA: The Goat was Buster Keaton's eighth independent production. During his first nine months in independent productions, starting in September 1920, he released eight short films, all great.

Virginia Fox was Keaton's leading lady in ten short comedies. After them, in 1924, she married the producer Darryl F. Zanuck who would become the Vice President of Production for Twentieth Century-Fox when it was founded in 1935 in a merger of Fox Film Corporation and Twentieth Century Pictures. She became the mother of Richard D. Zanuck and two other children.

I was intrigued to see The Goat at last, having read Imogen Sara Smith's wonderful book Buster Keaton: The Persistence of Comedy (2013). The Goat was for her the film that opened her eyes to the genius of Keaton. As for me, I possibly saw The Goat for the first time today. I became a convert to Keaton when Raymond Rohauer visited Finland in November 1971 with his big touring Keaton retrospective. I saw many of his prints on the screen, and the rest of his package on television in the next years. But we have never mounted nor have I have ever seen a complete retrospective of Keaton's shorts, not even in home viewing. With the corona lockdown I may have no excuse...

The surprise of The Goat (the title means: "Scapegoat") is in its freedom from logic and plausibility. It is an adventure in the absurd, in the realm of dreams, with an acute sense of the nightmare. It is a surrealist film made before the Surrealist Manifesto (which was published in 1924). It may be one of the films that actually inspired surrealists (who were very big film buffs).

Some shots are justly famous: Keaton's close-up behind the window bars of the photographer's studio (causing a mix-up with the convicted murderer Dead Shot Dan). His head growing rapidly from a long shot into a close-up on the cowcatcher of an approaching steam engine (prefiguring The General, 1926). Hilarious gags include his trying to hide on top of a clay model of a horse statue (with his signature "sentinel gesture" of holding a hand over the eyes).

The Goat is very much a chase film. The policemen chasing Buster have already a similar nightmarish presence as in Cops (1922). The final chase in the police chief's house takes place in the staircase and the elevator shaft, with a fantastic final gag in which Buster manipulates the elevator's control switch.

Some of the acrobatics of the chases border on the incredible like Buster's panther leap over the dinner table and through a narrow window over the door to escape the police chief who is also the father of his sweetheart.

There is a Kafkaesque dimension. Thanks to the wanted poster, everybody recognizes Buster and knows only one thing: he is guilty. During the chase Keaton, too, starts to think that he might be guilty: he might have accidentally killed the man who scolded Virginia rudely when she was walking her dog and the man stumbled upon the leash.

Although the plot defies logic and credibility, each set and action has been designed with mathematical perfection.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: SYNOPSIS FROM WIKIPEDIA:
SYNOPSIS FROM WIKIPEDIA: "Buster Keaton is walking by and peers through a barred window while captured murderer "Dead Shot Dan" is having his picture taken. Seeing that the photographer is looking away, Dan moves his head to the side and snaps a picture of Buster without anybody noticing. Thus, when Dan escapes, the wanted posters all show Buster with his hands on the bars. Unaware, Buster moves on to a street corner, where he notices a horseshoe, and kicks it aside. The next man who comes along picks it up and throws it for good luck. Within seconds the man finds a wallet filled with money. After scrambling to find the horseshoe, Buster picks it up and throws over his shoulder. It strikes a policeman, who chases Buster, and soon other officers join the chase. Buster lures them into the back of a truck, locks them in, and escapes."

"Afterwards, Buster sees a man arguing with a young woman. Buster defends the woman and throws the man to the ground. After walking away, Buster runs into the officers who had chased him earlier. He escapes by hopping onto a train going to a nearby town. Unfortunately for Buster, the town has heard of Dan's escape, and newspapers and wanted posters with Buster's picture are everywhere. The townspeople run from him in terror wherever he goes."

"Buster is once again in the wrong place at the wrong time when the police chief on his patrol is ambushed by a gangster. The gunman's bullets miss the officer, but the smoking gun ends up in Buster's hand. He runs from the persistent police chief, inadvertently causing mischief all over the town. While on the run, Buster encounters the same young woman he assisted earlier, who invites him to dinner. At her home he meets her father—he is the police chief, and he furiously chases Buster all over the apartment complex. After the young woman helps Buster escape, the pair emerge onto the street where Buster observes a sign outside a furniture store that says "You furnish the Girl, we furnish the home!" He carries his date into the store."

"This short contains one of Keaton's more memorable images: A distant, speeding train approaches the camera, and stops with a close-up of Keaton who has been sitting on the front of the train." (SYNOPSIS FROM WIKIPEDIA)