CinemaClown A parody of a real-life feud between two families in the 19th century, Buster Keaton's Our Hospitality may not be as memorable as Sherlock Jr. or The General but it nonetheless works as yet another accomplished piece of technical filmmaking from "The Great Stone Face" and packs in a few genuinely hilarious situations over the course of its runtime but there are also numerous stretches of nothingness in between that never lets it off the ground.The story of Our Hospitality covers the feud between two families that has been ongoing for so long that no one remembers who or what started it in the first place. The plot follows a young man who, while en route to his hometown, meets a girl on the train and they soon become acquainted. Invited to supper at her place, he ultimately learns that she belongs to the rival family and he's going to be executed by her kins as soon as he departs, following which he keeps finding ways to not leave the house.Directed by Buster Keaton, Our Hospitality is part serious family drama & part comedy and while both these elements are blended nicely, there are still a few overstretched dramatic moments in between that could've been further trimmed. The situation comedy however is expertly handled and Keaton's deadpan expressions only help in making it all the more effective. From a technical standpoint, there isn't really much to complain about as the set pieces, black-n-white photography & other elements are brilliantly executed.On an overall scale, Our Hospitality once again presents Buster Keaton in control of his craft, but its desired effect does feel diminished by time. There are moments that make you wonder how Keaton pulled it off, like the famous waterfall rescue scene, but there is quite a bit of plodding to sit through if all you are looking for is some good old-fashioned laughs. I do appreciate the technical mastery presented here and its contribution to its genre cannot be downplayed but I did expect more from what this silent classic eventually had in store. Still, worth your time & money and a definite must for Keaton fanatics.

Bob Pr. This was seen in the annual Kansas Silent Film Festival. It stars Buster Keaton and is a take-off on the famed Hatfield-McCoy feud, with those names altered to "Canfield" & "McKay."The plot has Willie McKay (Keaton) being taken north and raised in NY state after his father is killed in the feud. When he becomes a young adult, he's tricked into returning to inherit his father's estate (unaware that it's practically non-existent) and where he'll inevitably run into the wealthy Canfield family who have the intent to murder him.BUT also on his train journey back is a lovely young lady -- a Canfield as it happens -- who invites Willie to supper in her home with her father and 2 brothers. Because of the customs of Southern hospitality, her father forbids his sons to kill Willie in their home, so they try tricks to get him outside. A very funny movie with many surprises. (Keaton loved trains and had "The Rocket" built especially for this film.)

bobsgrock Buster Keaton's exceptional silent film is not just about a young man who falls for the wrong girl, nor is it just an exercise in the many ways that film can become an art form as well as entertainment, it is in more ways than one a nostalgic look back to a period of history when this country was fiddling with pieces of invention that would soon become many things we take for granted today. The scene where Keaton is riding a pedal-less bicycle shows his great comic sense as well as where the country was in that time. There is also a funny sequence involving a train, which is for the most part, simply some carriages hooked to each other and pulled by a simple wood-burning engine.All these scenes were Keaton's idea, in my opinion, to show the audience how far America had come since those days. The same could also be true in terms of the storyline, which centers around feuding and bitter hatred for no apparent reason. Indeed, one title card reads that in those days, men killed other men simply because they grew up hating that family. Here, Keaton is the rule-breaker, as he is in many of his other films. His romance with the girl is sweet and comical and how he alludes being killed by her feuding father and brothers can be suspenseful but is also funny as well.If you say you aren't a silent film fan, I encourage you to check this one out. The music is intriguing and enjoyable and Keaton is wonderful the whole time all the while showing the possibilities of film that he regrettably never got a hold of.

ackstasis After 'Three Ages (1923)' proved that he could direct a feature-length comedy {he had merely starred in 'The Saphead (1920)'}, Buster Keaton followed up its success with 'Our Hospitality (1923),' a film that set the mould for the type of films that he would continue to produce for the remainder of his time at United Artists. Keaton plays the polite and well-meaning dolt, incredibly naive to a point, but, when roused into action, he has all the determination, daring and agility of a circus performer. Natalie Talmadge, as the pretty and delicate Virginia Canfield, provides the necessary romantic subplot, just enough to please, without saturating the story's more exciting elements. The overwhelmingly-quirky comedy is rarely laugh-out-loud hilarious, but there's a certain quaintness and modesty to the material that really works, communicated most noticeably through Keaton's characteristically-underplayed slapstick performance. Silent comedians often compensated for the absence of sound by grossly exaggerating every expression and gesture; Keaton, on the other hand, reacts to each new obstacle with the solemnity of a monk, his inconceivable deadpan passiveness somehow amplifying the humour.It probably wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that 'Our Hospitality' was originally conceived to accommodate Keaton's passion for locomotives, and he was able to indulge in the construction of a working Stephenson's Rocket – an early steam train with a 0-2-2 wheel arrangement. This petite little locomotive provides some of the film's most memorable comedic moments, most of the enjoyment derived from low-key, episodic sight gags, whether it be Buster trying to wear his top hat in the cramped carriage, the dog that is continually in pursuit, the back wheels that roll loose, the donkey blocking the tracks, or the tracks themselves, which determinedly follow the contours of the earth with precarious rigidity. Though this little train scarcely travels at a walking pace, some of the techniques that Keaton developed here would come in handy four years later, when he filmed his Civil War train epic, 'The General (1927).' The remainder of the film is a sharp comedy-of-manners, as the wealthy Canfield family plots to murder Keaton's Willie McKay, the culmination of a generations-long feud between the two warring lineages.Production took place from a screenplay by Clyde Bruckman, Jean C. Havez and Joseph A. Mitchell, and the writers aim a few good-natured digs at the American South. The family feud, which is continued throughout the decades despite the fact that nobody remembers how it began, sounds too ludicrous to be true, but I was surprised to learn of a firm grounding in fact – the story was, indeed, based on the bloody real-life feud between the Hatfield and McCoy families. Paradoxically, the film also celebrates the indomitable "Southern hospitality" of the local folk, and the Canfield family (led by Keaton-regular Joe Roberts, in his final role) grudgingly agrees to only shoot their hapless enemy once he has left the cover of their home and so has ceased to be their guest. As one might expect, Buster Keaton risked his neck on more than a few occasions, the most unforgettable stunt involving his dangling precariously from a log perched at the crest of a waterfall, and his daring acrobatic rescue of the beautiful damsel-in-distress. Talmadge may have been replaced by a dummy, but Keaton was there, as always, in the flesh.