PARLOR, BEDROOM AND BATH (1931) Buster Keaton

[Simon Myers]

I watched this film yesterday at the Cinema Museum in London. Not one of the best of Buster's sound films I've seen. I found the plot convoluted and the gags unfunny. There was hardly a laugh from the 30 people in the room. It doesn't seem to go down well with a modern audience.

[Richard M Roberts]

I watched this film yesterday at the Cinema Museum in London. Not one of the best of Buster's sound films I've seen. I found the plot convoluted and the gags unfunny. There was hardly a laugh from the 30 people in the room. It doesn't seem to go down well with a modern audience.

That's too bad, because it is actually one of the better of Buster's MGM talkies. I've run it for audiences where it has gone down rather well. Yet I can also see where a "modern" audience probably doesn't get the tropes of the original farce the film is based on and so don't sympathize with anyone's plight in the story. There are however, several good Buster set pieces, like destroying the car on the train tracks, and his slipping around in the hotel lobby with Cliff Edwards and Ed Brophy after getting out of the rain (though that sequence is even better in the German version, which replaces Edwards with George Davis as the Bellboy, then you have two genuine comic acrobats taking much better planned out falls). And you get a good look at the Italian Villa, which is the mansion location used in the film.

If that one doesn't go over, I'd hate to run THE PASSIONATE PLUMBER or SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK for an audience today, those two are truly dreadful.

RICHARD M ROBERTS