Thanks for the memories!

Just perfect...

hyped garbage

Best movie ever!

This Keaton short has hilarity, acrobatics, and true silliness of course. But also a type of transfigured social justice. That is elevated justice found out west even in the 19th Century. Keaton knew about evil oil barons and so on from his private experience. I hold him to be higher than Lloyd or Chaplin.It's prognostication of the future of Oklahoma Cherokees which came true long after this so-called silly film short was released. How do I know? My now-deceased parents worked as chief-cooks-and-bottle-washers for a man who did cheat the Cherokees and found himself in terror of revenge in Oklahoma in the early '30s. Also I witnessed children where I live receive the benefits due them as Cherokees. Friends of mine. What the silliness in this short does is warn its fans that bad things happen to good people. And they still do as seen in this short silly film. Keaton acts as a willing peacemaker and is made a blood brother as later occurs in other films and even a classic '50s TV show which I watched as a kid. What about empathy here? There were no Indian reservations anywhere when Keaton was born, but he saw what was happening around him. Yes,folks here in so-cal now want to be known as Indians instead of PC crap. OK?

In the early days of silent films Indians were inevitably the all purpose villains. For those who think that it was not until such post World War II films as Devil's Doorway, Broken Arrow, and Fort Apache that the Indian point of view was filmed, The Paleface, a comic short subject by Buster Keaton was the granddaddy of those other classics.In fact the villains are really modern ones, would you believe oil company executives interested in the almighty profit at the expense of everything else. But oil was shortly to be cast in infamy with the American public in the form of the Teapot Dome Scandal which would break a couple of years later. Even then there was a stench emanating from Wyoming and people were asking questions.The oil company has discovered oil on Indian land and has summarily ordered them off. The Indians are naturally upset and the chief Joe Roberts promises to kill the next white man who sets foot on the reservation. Who should it be, but poor innocent butterfly collector Buster Keaton, as innocent here as his comic rivals Harry Langdon or Stan Laurel. The great stone face leads the Indians on quite the merry chase and with a little help from asbestos, survives a burning at the stake. With what we know now, one also shudders at the mesothelioma Buster acquired from that experience. Knowing this man is something special, The Paleface becomes a leader of the tribe and they successfully battle oil company encroachment. By the way one of the vignettes in the James Stewart film The FBI Story deals with just this question, Indians being cheated out of their land by oil company speculators. Of course it was dealt with a bit more seriously than in The Paleface.Not too much similarity between this and the Bob Hope-Jane Russell feature film classic, The Paleface. Hope also nearly got burned at the stake, but his escape was different, one classically different method from another great comedian.The Paleface is a real good introduction to the comic art of Buster Keaton.

Any spoilers are in references to Buster's sight gags. The inventive genius of Buster Keaton never ceases to amaze. Though not one of his greats, this short is full of some brilliantly observed gags, many of which are cleverly set up during the film: (a) being chased by the Indians and all stopping while he inspects a wasp which stings him; and the gag with the butterfly net and the chief; (b) moving the stake while the firewood is being piled up to the consternation of the wood gatherer who eventually gets knocked out by the stake when Buster bends over; (c) the rope bridge across the canyon which Buster crosses by moving the few slats one at a time; (d) when Buster is caught by the oil executive who wants to change clothes with him, Buster produces a small leafless tree to provide no privacy; (e) whilst doing the war dance in the oil company office, stopping to explain to an Indian how the dance should be done; (f) crawling after an escaping executive and about to scalp him, when the exec lifts off his toupee. Buster takes it to the chief who is mightily impressed; (g) when he jumps out of the tree, the Indians suddenly produce a firemen's mat for him to land in (as used by Eric von Stroheim in Foolish Wives); (h) the gates to the Indian encampment, knocking out pursuers by swinging the locking bar up then down. Many of the sight gags done for real, and hardly ever bettered, will, as one reviewer notes, turn up later as staples for everybody's cartoons. For example all the ones on the mountains. Also, the film is certainly not racist: it is clearly on the side of the Indians, and Buster takes an Indian girl and kisses her for two years(!) at a time when he couldn't have done that with a black girl. (The reference to the scantily clad tribe having lost their clothes in a game of strip poker is not racist.)

This Buster Keaton short didn't have a ton of laughs but it had enough to suit me. The gist of the story is an Indian tribe getting their land taken from them by corrupt oil men and Buster getting it back for them.Along the way, he proves himself to be a superhuman "god" by surviving being burned at the stake. (A fire-proof asbestos suit did the trick!) Later, he's involved in warring tribes. Through a decent portion of the film, he is being chased by either of the tribes. Chase scenes are always funny and these in this movie are no exception. Some of these sight gags elicit hardy laughs. In the end, Buster not only saves the Indians' land but gets a pretty "squab," too!This is good slapstick and another example of why some people - me included - think Keaton's short movies, generally speaking, were better than his feature films. Some reviewers here label this one "cute and silly" and I would agree with that.