18. Our Hospitality (1923)

Directed By John G. Blystone and Buster Keaton

Synopsis

There's a long running feud between two families. Keaton is Willie McKay, who after the killing of his father by a member of the Canfield family is taken to New York to be raised away from the feud. One day Willie receives a letter saying that he has to go take care of the McKay "estate". On the most wonderful train journey he falls in love with one of the passengers, who unbeknownst to him is actually Virginia Canfield.

Buster eventually arrives in his hometown where the Canfields constantly try to kill him. Virginia invites him for supper at the Canfield house, where he is safe from the Canfields themselves due to hospitality rules (i.e. they can't kill their guest). Eventually Willie engenders a way to become an almost permanent guest. In the end, however, Virginia kicks him out when she discovers he is a McKay. While running away from the Canfields, who are now trying to kill him, Willie saves Virginia's life in an amazing waterfall scene, they get married and all ends well.

Review

Wow, just wow. And I don't mean World of Warcraft. We have changed year from 1922 to 23, but we haven't stopped the roll of excellent films. Ok, for a 1923 film to still be laugh out loud funny 83 years later is quite a feat. And this is that. It's not only the physical gags as well, which are pretty amazing, but the whole plot is so ludicrous that it is very funny.

The visual gags here are not the typical slapstick, slipping on banana peel type thing, they actually are pretty surreal at times. It is actually very hard to relate them without ruining them, that being the point of them being VISUAL gags. So you really need to see them. And it definitely is not wasted time.

You see the origin of a lot of what we find funny or impressive today. From Monty Python to Jackie Chan, Keaton has influenced them all. And it is a lost art, no one would insure Keaton today, he does all his stunts and for some of them death defying is an understatement. This is all tempered however with very intelligent surrealism. The whole train ride from New York to the South is the most charming, weird and wonderful trip that I've ever seen. You can't help but watch it with a smile in your face.

Not much more that I can say except that you NEED to see it. So buy it at Amazon UK or US.

Final Grade

9/10 (I can't seem to give anything else lately, silent films are growing on me like a bad case of athlete's foot)

Trivia

The film is based on a real life feud.

From Wiki:

The Hatfield-McCoy feud (1878–1891) is an account of American lore that has become a metaphor for bitterly feuding rival parties, something like an Appalachian Capulet-Montague rivalry, involving two warring families of the West Virginia-Kentucky backcountry along the Tug Fork River, off the Big Sandy River. However, unlike the fictional Romeo and Juliet, this feud was violently real.

As legends go, the first recorded instance of violence in the feud occurred after an 1878 dispute about the ownership of a hog: Floyd Hatfield had it, and Randolph McCoy said it was his. But in truth, it was over land or property lines and the ownership of that land. The pig was only in dispute because one family believed that the pig was theirs because it was on their property. The matter was taken to court, and the McCoys lost because of the testimony of Bill Staton, a relative of both families. In June 1880, Staton was killed by two McCoy brothers, Sam and Paris, who were later acquitted on the grounds of self-defense.

The feud escalated after Roseanna McCoy began an affair with Johnse Hatfield, leaving her family to live with the Hatfields in West Virginia. Roseanna eventually returned to the McCoys, but when the couple tried to resume their relationship, Johnse Hatfield was kidnapped by the McCoys, and was saved only when Roseanna made a desperate ride to alert Devil Anse Hatfield, who organized a rescue party.

Despite what was seen as a betrayal of her family on his behalf, Johnse thereafter abandoned the pregnant Roseanna, marrying instead her cousin Nancy McCoy in 1881.

The feud burst into full fury in 1882, when Ellison Hatfield, brother of "Devil Anse" Hatfield, was brutally murdered by three of Roseanna McCoy's brothers, stabbed 26 times and finished off with a shot. The brothers were themselves murdered in turn as the vendetta escalated.

Between 1880 and 1891, the feud claimed more than a dozen members of these families, becoming headline news around the country and compelling the governors of both Kentucky and West Virginia to call up the National Guard to restore order after the disappearance of dozens of bounty hunters sent to calm the bloodlust. The Hatfields claimed more lives than the McCoy's did by the time order had been restored.

Eight Hatfields were kidnapped and brought to Kentucky to stand trial for the murder of a female member of the McCoy clan, Alifair. She had been shot after exiting a burning building that had been set aflame by a group of Hatfields. Because of issues of due process and illegal extradition, the U.S. Supreme Court became involved. Eventually, the eight men were tried in Kentucky, and all eight were found guilty. Seven received life imprisonment, and the eighth was executed in a public hanging (even though it was prohibited by law), probably as a warning to end the violence. Thousands of spectators attended the hanging in Pikeville, Kentucky. The families finally agreed to disagree in 1891.

In the popular imagination, the Hatfield-McCoy feud became a curiosity, a proverb, and even a joke. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain's description of a feud between the Grangerford and Shepherdson families fits this pattern, as does the Harkness-Folwell vendetta (set in the Cumberland Mountains) from O Henry's "Squaring The Circle". Buster Keaton portrayed a similar feud in his 1923 comedy Our Hospitality. Many cartoon characters, from Bugs Bunny to Ren and Stimpy and the Flintstones, have exploited the notorious feud with the feature character caught literally in the crossfire. In the 1970s, the popular television game show Family Feud reunited descendants of the two families for a week of competition with the overall winning family (the one winning 3 out of 5 games) taking home a pig representative of the original creature at the center of the initial dispute. (Of course, the winning family each day played "Fast Money" under normal rules.)