It's interesting and very tragic how much of the silent era has been lost to the world forever. Some works we've managed to reproduce, but not very effectively.
This is Buster Keaton's favorite one of his shorts. How, then, it managed to be one of those nearly completely destroyed, is beyond me. You'd think that his favorite would be the one most taken care of. But that's not how it worked, unfortunately. Film preservationists have done their best, but what remains is only okay at best.
A down-and-out guy who lost his girlfriend and his job tries to commit suicide via different methods before eventually getting drunk (off of "poison"--a butler's hidden stash, if you know what I mean) and volunteering to find "The illusive and rare armadillo" for a zoological society. Of course he doesn't go to Texas or anything, where you can basically just pick up an armadillo off of any side of the highway, but instead finds his way (unclearly, due to lost footage) to a high-class country club, where he makes his last desperate attempts to fit in.
The biggest gag is missing. The timing is a bit off. There's still some great stuff, like the two motorcycle headlight gag and probably one of the darkest jokes of Keaton's career ("I was on a branch of the zoo!"), but most of it's oomph is basically gone.
Tragic.
--PolarisDiB
This is Buster Keaton's favorite one of his shorts. How, then, it managed to be one of those nearly completely destroyed, is beyond me. You'd think that his favorite would be the one most taken care of. But that's not how it worked, unfortunately. Film preservationists have done their best, but what remains is only okay at best.
A down-and-out guy who lost his girlfriend and his job tries to commit suicide via different methods before eventually getting drunk (off of "poison"--a butler's hidden stash, if you know what I mean) and volunteering to find "The illusive and rare armadillo" for a zoological society. Of course he doesn't go to Texas or anything, where you can basically just pick up an armadillo off of any side of the highway, but instead finds his way (unclearly, due to lost footage) to a high-class country club, where he makes his last desperate attempts to fit in.
The biggest gag is missing. The timing is a bit off. There's still some great stuff, like the two motorcycle headlight gag and probably one of the darkest jokes of Keaton's career ("I was on a branch of the zoo!"), but most of it's oomph is basically gone.
Tragic.
--PolarisDiB