I only watched "Free and Easy" out of the same kind of morbid curiosity that makes people slow down to gape at car wrecks. And it is indeed a wreck -- the wreck of Buster Keaton's career.
Buster Keaton liked to take a strong beginning and ending and let the middle work itself out as he and his crew played with the sets and props. "Free and Easy" provides a premise Buster could have worked with: Bungling hayseed Elmer Butz is assigned to manage the Hollywood career of hopeful prairie blossom Miss Gopher City (a girl he secretly loves), but she is actually an unassuming and modest maiden being pushed by her battle-axe of a stage mother. The ending -- in which Buster gets a Hollywood contract but loses the girl -- was a departure from typical Keaton, but as we saw in "Cops," losing the girl was something Keaton could twist into a dark, shuddering laugh. There was plenty there for Keaton to work with. It's a shame nobody let him.
At every turn, the Keaton fan sees missed opportunities, starting with the opening scene in which Elmer ends up on the caboose of a train. Only in the perverse machinations of the MGM system could Buster Keaton + Train = Zilch. It's like presenting Chico Marx with a piano but not letting him touch a single key. MGM didn't even milk Keaton + Train - Stunts = Zilch for the irony. It's as if they were totally unaware that Buster had ever done a thing with trains in his entire career.
The chase -- which critics inexplicably single out as somehow a bit of gold this celluloid junk heap -- falls totally flat. MGM never really allows Keaton to run, dodge, or leap. The guard who is chasing him, in fact, gets the two most vivid physical moments. The idea of Buster Keaton being pursued through a movie studio was ripe with possibilities, but instead each of the scenes he stumbles into is over-elaborately set up when an economy of set-up would have been funnier, completely breaking the rhythm and pace of what could have been an exciting, exhilarating romp in Buster's able hands.
Then there's the matter of Buster himself. Not only is his nimble, athletic body not put to much use, it's obscured in padded tights and enormous clown pants. Though Buster dances adeptly in the contrived musical scene, the costume obscures and upstages his performance. In another move that leaves the viewer wondering if anybody at MGM had actually watched Buster's silent work, his richly but subtly expressive face is obscured with bizarre makeup, effectively obliterating his large, soulful eyes right at the most potentially poignant part of the entire film, in which he inadvertently delivers the girl he loves into the arms of his rival.
Keaton manages to slip in a few tiny moments -- catching his hat behind his back when it falls off, skidding to a bemused stop when he momentarily shakes his pursuers -- but virtually every other possibility slips by unexploited. The mind boggles at the sheer scale of the gap between what MGM made and what Keaton could have done with the same raw material.
The finale involves turning Keaton into an enormous clown puppet, jerked about by thick, unbreakable strings. As biographer Edward McPherson noted, "the story concerns a man who goes to MGM, is made into a misunderstood clown, then has his heart broken." "Free and Easy" could serve as a tragic metaphorical documentary about Keaton's career.
Buster Keaton liked to take a strong beginning and ending and let the middle work itself out as he and his crew played with the sets and props. "Free and Easy" provides a premise Buster could have worked with: Bungling hayseed Elmer Butz is assigned to manage the Hollywood career of hopeful prairie blossom Miss Gopher City (a girl he secretly loves), but she is actually an unassuming and modest maiden being pushed by her battle-axe of a stage mother. The ending -- in which Buster gets a Hollywood contract but loses the girl -- was a departure from typical Keaton, but as we saw in "Cops," losing the girl was something Keaton could twist into a dark, shuddering laugh. There was plenty there for Keaton to work with. It's a shame nobody let him.
At every turn, the Keaton fan sees missed opportunities, starting with the opening scene in which Elmer ends up on the caboose of a train. Only in the perverse machinations of the MGM system could Buster Keaton + Train = Zilch. It's like presenting Chico Marx with a piano but not letting him touch a single key. MGM didn't even milk Keaton + Train - Stunts = Zilch for the irony. It's as if they were totally unaware that Buster had ever done a thing with trains in his entire career.
The chase -- which critics inexplicably single out as somehow a bit of gold this celluloid junk heap -- falls totally flat. MGM never really allows Keaton to run, dodge, or leap. The guard who is chasing him, in fact, gets the two most vivid physical moments. The idea of Buster Keaton being pursued through a movie studio was ripe with possibilities, but instead each of the scenes he stumbles into is over-elaborately set up when an economy of set-up would have been funnier, completely breaking the rhythm and pace of what could have been an exciting, exhilarating romp in Buster's able hands.
Then there's the matter of Buster himself. Not only is his nimble, athletic body not put to much use, it's obscured in padded tights and enormous clown pants. Though Buster dances adeptly in the contrived musical scene, the costume obscures and upstages his performance. In another move that leaves the viewer wondering if anybody at MGM had actually watched Buster's silent work, his richly but subtly expressive face is obscured with bizarre makeup, effectively obliterating his large, soulful eyes right at the most potentially poignant part of the entire film, in which he inadvertently delivers the girl he loves into the arms of his rival.
Keaton manages to slip in a few tiny moments -- catching his hat behind his back when it falls off, skidding to a bemused stop when he momentarily shakes his pursuers -- but virtually every other possibility slips by unexploited. The mind boggles at the sheer scale of the gap between what MGM made and what Keaton could have done with the same raw material.
The finale involves turning Keaton into an enormous clown puppet, jerked about by thick, unbreakable strings. As biographer Edward McPherson noted, "the story concerns a man who goes to MGM, is made into a misunderstood clown, then has his heart broken." "Free and Easy" could serve as a tragic metaphorical documentary about Keaton's career.