The Boat (1921 film)

The Boat is a 1921 American two-reel silent comedy film written by, directed by, and starring Buster Keaton. Contemporary reviews consider the film one of Keaton's best shorts, alongside One Week (1920), The Playhouse (1921), and Cops (1922).[1] The film is presently in the public domain.[2] The International Buster Keaton Society takes its name, The Damfinos, from the name of the boat in the film.

The Boat
Still with Buster Keaton and Sybil Seely
Directed byBuster Keaton
Edward F. Cline
Produced byJoseph M. Schenck
Written byBuster Keaton
Edward F. Cline
StarringBuster Keaton
Sybil Seely
CinematographyElgin Lessley
Distributed byFirst National Pictures
Release date
  • November 10, 1921 (1921-11-10)
Running time
25 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageSilent (English intertitles)

Plot

Buster is married with two children (both of whom wear child-sized versions of the same pork pie hat[3]). He has built a large boat he has christened Damfino inside his home. When he finishes and decides to take the boat out to sea, he discovers it is too large to fit through the door. Buster enlarges the opening a bit, but when he tows the boat out using a pulley line from his Model T car, it proves to be a bit bigger than he estimated, and the house completely collapses.

Buster loses his car during the attempt to launch the boat to sea. The boat passes with impunity under the exceedingly low bridges of the Venice (California) canals thanks to Buster's boat design. While out on the Pacific, Buster and his family are caught in a terrible storm. The boat is barely seaworthy to begin with, and it does not help that Buster nails a picture up inside the boat, causing an improbable leak, or when he further drills through the bottom of the boat to let the water out, resulting in a spectacular gusher of a leak. He radios a Morse Code call for help, but when the coast guard operator asks who it is, he answers, "d-a-m-f-i-n-o" in Morse Code. The operator interprets it as "damn if I know"[4] and dismisses the call as a prank. Taking to a ridiculously small dinghy that is in fact a bathtub, the family resign themselves to the fact that they will sink into the sea. Then they realize they are actually in shallow water. After wading a short distance, Buster and his family come up on a deserted beach in the dark of night. "Where are we?" asks his wife (via an intertitle), to which Buster replies, "Damn if I know" (mouthing the words to the camera; no intertitle is used).

Themes

The Boat is a classic retelling of Keaton's favorite theme of Man versus Machine. The accompanying themes of calamity and destruction simultaneously pave the way for the little man to regain control of the situation.[5]

Oldham notes that the name of the boat, Damfino (or "damn if I know") reflects Keaton's own reaction to the perplexing and challenging world he confronts in his films.[6] As the name is referenced numerous times throughout the film, Oldham also describes it as "probably the longest running single pun in the history of the silent film".[6] In their book Buster Keaton and the Muskegon Connection, Okkonen and Pesch assert that Keaton picked up the name from a powerboat entry in an Actors' Colony regatta in Muskegon, Michigan.[7] Keaton reused the name for a racing shell in his 1927 film College.[8] Members of the International Buster Keaton Society informally call themselves The Damfinos.[9]

Cast

Production

Development

Neibur and Niemi consider The Boat the third installment in a trilogy of films about a young married couple, beginning with The Scarecrow (1920) and continuing with One Week (1920).[10] They also note the parallelism between the ending of One Week, in which the couple's home is destroyed by a train, and the beginning of The Boat, in which their house is destroyed by the boat.[4] Keaton considered combining One Week and The Boat into a single four-reeler that would follow the adventures of a young couple. To that end, Virginia Fox, who was originally cast as the wife in The Boat, was replaced with Sybil Seely, the wife in One Week. However, the idea of combining the films was never realized.[10][3]

Filming and special effects

The boat launch, in which the vessel slides out of the launching ramp and sinks straight into the water, took three days to film.[11][3] Technical director Fred Gabourie had two 35 ft (11 m) boats built for the production—one to float and one to sink.[3] However, neither vessel performed its function.[3] The production crew initially weighted the boat meant to sink with approximately 1,600 lb (730 kg) of pig iron and T-rails, but as the vessel slid off the ramp it slowed down instead of gliding underwater. Keaton later explained that an undercrank could not be used because it would make the surface of the water "jumpy". The crew next constructed a breakaway stern so the vessel would collapse upon hitting the water—but an air pocket in the nose of the boat kept the nose up out of the water. As a next strategy, the crew drilled holes all over the boat to ensure it would sink. But the buoyancy of the wood itself stopped it from sinking quickly. Finally, the crew towed the boat out to Balboa Bay off Newport Beach, California, and sank an anchor with a cable attached to a pulley mounted on the stern. At the other end, the cable was attached to a tugboat, which dragged the boat under the water to complete the gag.[11]

Keaton and Gabourie also conceived the design of the collapsible funnels, mast, and rigging of the boat which enables it to pass safely under bridges, in another inventive sight gag.[12]

Release

The Boat was released by Metro Pictures on November 10, 1921.[10] It was released under the foreign titles La barca in Italy and Spain, Frigocapitaine au long cours in France, Acksónak in Hungary, and Buster merenkulkijana in Finland.[10]

Reception

The Boat was well-received by filmgoers.[10] Keaton considered it one of his personal favorites.[10] In his autobiography The Wonderful World of Slapstick, Keaton commented that the signature image of his pork pie hat floating on the surface of the water at the end instantly identified him and made audiences think that he was "walking underwater just underneath it".[13]

A 1921 review in The Washington Post called the film a classic, suggesting that Keaton must have consulted with the United States Navy to come up with "every possible mishap that can by any possibility befall a vessel plying the high seas".[14]

See also

References
  1. Eyman, Scott (October 1, 1995). "Buster's Best". The Palm Beach Post. p. 6J – via Newspapers.com.
  2. "Progressive Silent Film List: The Boat". Silent Era. Archived from the original on May 13, 2008. Retrieved February 26, 2008.
  3. Keaton & Vance 2001, p. 84.
  4. Neibaur & Niemi 2013, p. 119.
  5. Oldham 2010, pp. 147-8.
  6. Oldham 2010, p. 149.
  7. Okkonen, Marc; Pesch, Ron (1995). Buster Keaton and the Muskegon Connection: The Actor's Colony at Bluffton, 1908-1938. Dobb Printing, Inc. p. 8.
  8. Gehring 2018, p. 86.
  9. "Buster Keaton's The Boat". classicsailor.com. November 15, 2018. Retrieved January 17, 2021.
  10. Neibaur & Niemi 2013, p. 177.
  11. Brownlow 1968, p. 485.
  12. McPherson 2011, p. 94.
  13. Keaton & Samuels 1960, p. 172.
  14. "Crandall's Metropolitan—Charles Ray and Buster Keaton". The Washington Post. November 28, 1921. p. 8 – via Newspapers.com.

Sources
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