User Reviews

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS***

"Day Dreams" is the bitterest and most disenchanted Buster Keaton film... which is saying a great deal about this most embittered and darkest of all comedians. "Day Dreams" climaxes with one of the most famous gags in the Keaton canon, and fades out on a final image of stark futility worthy of Samuel Beckett. It's also hilarious.

"Day Dreams" is a nightmare in three-quarter time, with a plot line employing a three-beat structure. Small-town Buster has gone to seek his fame and fortune in New York City, from where he sends letters home to his girlfriend (Renée Adorée). Most of the film relies on this three-beat cycle: #1) We read an extract of a letter from Buster to his girlfriend. #2) We see the girlfriend's visualisation of how well Buster is doing in the city. #3) The bitter payoff shows the grim reality of Buster's ill fortunes. Then the cycle starts again with the next letter.

For instance, Buster writes to Renée that he's "cleaning up on Wall Street". We see how she visualises him as a high-powered stockbroker, wrangling yards of tickertape and making million-dollar deals. Then we see the darker reality: Buster is actually a street sweeper in the financial district ... yes, he's cleaning up on Wall Street.

Buster's next letter tells his girl that he's taken up a medical career. She imagines him in a gleaming operating theatre, performing life-and-death surgery. In fact, Buster is a vet's assistant, tending sick animals. Next, Buster writes to his girl that he's become an actor. Here we see a truly impressive sequence, as Renee visualises Buster onstage as Hamlet, clutching Yorick's skull and emoting to a packed house in a swank theatre. Now the reality shows us a much more downmarket theatre, where a Roman epic is onstage: Buster is an anonymous spear-carrier in a long row of spear-carriers. He stands out only because he's the shortest in the line, and he manages to wreck the production with his own incompetence.

SPOILERS COMING. At the climax of the film, the cops are after Buster. He flees to the waterfront ... where a ferry is under way, several feet from the wharf. With the police on his heels, Buster takes a mighty leap. He hurdles the gap, lands safely on the deck of the outgoing ferry, and turns round to thumb his nose at the cops on the dock ... only to discover that the ferry is actually heading INTO the harbour! The fade-out gag is brilliant. Fleeing from the police, Buster ends up inside the paddlewheel of a steamer. When the ship gets under way, the wheel starts to revolve ... with Buster inside it, like a hamster in an exercise wheel. Buster stoically keeps pace with the wheel, striding forward clockwise while the wheel churns anti-clockwise. But now the wheel moves faster and faster, and Buster is forced to keep running while revolving like a modern Ixion in Hades. Finally he trips and falls, sinking below the surface ... but the spinning wheel has caught him now, and Buster is lifted and dunked, lifted and dunked, into the water and out again, over and over. Big wheel keeps on turning. It's a truly Beckettian fate, leaving Buster in a water-logged limbo: constantly moving yet never getting anywhere. Frightening and yet hilarious. "Day Dreams" deserves to be in the top 10 list of Keaton's greatest films. My rating: 10 out of 10.

Okay, this is not a particularly sophisticated film by Buster Keaton. In fact, the movie is episodic instead of the usual narrative form of story telling. Buster wants to marry a girl but has no job or skills. When her father is apprehensive to give his approval, Buster says he'll go to the city and prove himself--or shoot himself if he fails. Again and again, the hardworking but stupid guy keeps losing jobs--my favorite was when he brought in the cat to be checked out by the vet at the animal shelter where he worked and accidentally brought in a skunk! Later, another hilarious scene results in Buster being hooked by a fisherman. And, the guy then stuck him on his stringer! In fact, there quite a few funny vignettes but unfortunately, the movie seemed to end on a rather flat note. Funny but not great art or among Keaton's very best, but still well worth seeing.

This is probably the most predictable of Keaton shorts, only with an unpredictable ending that's somewhat disappointing.

Keaton loves the girl, and wants to marry her, but her father won't hear of it until he "makes good" in the big city. He proceeds to run off to do so, working at various odd jobs (with obvious results) while sending home misrepresentative letters to his girlfriend, who sits and imagines him occupied at great and important jobs.

While the wordplay in the letters (the plot device that drives most of the action) is somewhat humorous in its playfulness with both words and occupations, once the viewer gets the idea (which is quickly) it all becomes rather simplistic. Actually, I notice in this short a few homages to Chaplin movies, which I think shows that Keaton was trying something a bit more like Chaplin's tramp. If such a possibility is so, it clearly shows that the two comedians really did have different enough approaches that register differently to their distinctive storytelling.

And then it just sort of ends, in a way ultimately unsatisfying.

--PolarisDiB

Overall, I thought this film was good, and Keaton fans will see several things that hint of bigger things that came in his feature films! I liked the variety of each of his jobs, which included a couple of ribs on Chaplin along the way (with one reminiscent of "City Lights" nine years later). This was one of his later short films, right when he was on the cusp of screen immortality through his full-length features.

Most reviews and comments I've seen so far talk about the famous paddle wheel sequence - but I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned the scene where he runs and catches the back of the moving streetcar!! My jaw drops every time I see it! If it was as real as it looked, then Buster Keaton was one very STRONG man - this showed what we didn't see in a similar escape he makes on a moving car amidst his big chase in "Cops"!

However, as top-notch of a stuntman and athlete that Keaton was, this streetcar-catching bit (and the car-catching bit in "Cops") may have HAD to be "tricked"; that it was beyond even Keaton's great abilities. Thoughts, anyone?

Keaton strove for realism and believability in all things in his feature films, but I'm sure he didn't hold hard and fast to that rule in his short films. No fan should be surprised by absurdities in silent comedy shorts - just about anything could happen as long as it got a laugh.

Anyway - this film still showcases many of his talents and I enjoyed it very much. I think after this, though, Buster finally learned to not let himself be chased by an army of cops - it never ended well for him! ;-) lol

In love with pretty Renee Adore, sad sack Buster Keaton takes a job in the big city, well job after job after job, finding issues with skunks, big city folk (and I mean BIG) and other obstacles beyond his control. Of course, his combination of bad timing, general clumsiness and the fates that befall so-called losers like him all stand in his way. But in just 20 minutes, Keaton builds an awesome eclectic resume, getting a ton of laughs along the way. A great chase scene shows the technical advances that stalled during the early talkie days.

This rare, partially lost short, takes advantage of old L.A. L ovations and gets Keystone cops in on the action where truly amazing special effects help turn what's left into a terrific walk (or run in Keaton's case) down old cinema memory lane. A great visual at the end gives a look into his future as Buster battles with the paddle wheel of a large boat. Maybe one day we'll get a great movie bio of the great stone face, here doing what he does best, making you laugh while wondering how he got it all together.

I like ol' Stoneface. Probably more than Chaplin. There's always a more depressing note to Keaton's short films than to the Tramp's who probably would have gotten the girl here somehow or we would have seen her declare her love for him no matter how much wealth he (not) possesses. However, I felt that even under 20 minutes, this short film could have been improved by cutting out a couple shots. The letters sent by him to his girl describing the situation just the way it was (not) were easily the funniest part, especially the cleaning-up at the stock exchange, but the way these letters were depicted and elaborated in the particular scenes went almost on for too long. So did the chase scene towards the end. By the ending, when he returns back to his sweetheart, the situation should have been elaborated that you'd feel either sorry or schadenfreude for the character or that you include an ending on a positive note that the audience at least leaves the cinema with a smile on their lips. Unfortunately, I didn't fell anything really and I'd say that this is not a good choice to start getting into Keaton's work. He's done much better.