The High Sign (1921)

The High Sign" was Buster Keaton's first two-reeler after he went solo after leaving his partnership with Roscoe Arbuckle in 1920, but it was not the first film he released. Here he plays a drifter who gets hired by a member of the gang "The Blinking Blizzards" to run a shooting gallery. In a turn of events that can happen only in a Keaton film, Buster winds up being hired to both kill the father of the girl he loves and also to protect him. The film ends with a funny chase sequence through a house that has a series of trick doors, false walls, and traps that could only be designed by the mind of Keaton. Keaton disliked "The High Sign" and delayed its release. Instead, his premiere release was "One Week". Both films show a genius in bloom.

The 'High Sign' has to be my favourite Buster Keaton short and it just so happens to be the first independent film Keaton produced, giving birth to his iconic unnamed character. However Keaton himself was disappointed with the film and didn't release it until the following year instead making "One Week" his first solo short. I question why though as I feel the premise of The 'High Sign' is one of Keaton's most inspired and possibly even worthy of being used as a set up for a feature. It's true what they say, the artist is often wrong about their own work.The opening prologue of The High Sign states "Our hero came from Nowhere- he wasn't going Anywhere and got kicked off Somewhere"; and considering his superhuman stunts he's like an alien who just landed on Earth. This opening prologue reminds me of a statement Roger Ebert made in his review of The General; "(Keaton) seems like a modern visitor to the world of silent clowns" The 'High Sign' packs in so much humor and gags into its 20 minutes such as his set up with the dog, meat and string (it's hard to explain); it's like something Mr Bean would come up with. The short also features the earliest example I've seen in film of a recurring gag with the high sign itself, a secret signal between gangsters. Keaton even messes with the audience's expectation for comic effect by having himself walk past a banana peel on the ground only to not slip on it. Likewise the short's finale is a real "How did they do that?" sequence. The house with its traps and secret hatches is an astounding piece of set design and when all the rooms appear on screen at once which Keaton jumping between them, it reminds me of a 2D video game. I was laughing, in awe and even shocked (when the gangster's neck is closed on the door) all at once. There is even a customer at one point who has quite a resemblance to Charlie Chaplin.I'll say it now and I'll say it again; the genius of Buster Keaton will never cease to amaze me.

Some people -- to paraphrase Mel Brooks -- call Buster Keaton a genius. But that's both too little and too much to give him credit; Einstein was a genius, Keaton... is incredible.In the Fatty Arbuckle films he's amusing in what we tend to put down as a 'silent-comedy' way, a {by and large} straight-faced clown in a world of food fights, cross-dressing, clumsy cops and general anarchy. After exposure to a few hours of these I was, frankly, ready to write Keaton off as simply another sub-Laurel-and-Hardy slapstick act -- in the Arbuckle shorts he's reasonably funny but nothing to rave over. And then, suddenly, in the middle of the programme, came "The High Sign"... and it knocked me for six here, there, and into the middle of next week.As a solo debut it's nothing short of astounding. It's the spectacle of a great talent emerging fully-formed and all at once into unique existence, like Athena from the head of Zeus. From the opening scene, the style, the humour, the devices, the sheer *intelligence* are instantly, blazingly original: this isn't just 'silent comedy' to be laughed at and over by the modern public with an air of faint condescension, it's surreal and hilarious and utterly gifted to side-splitting effect by anyone's standard. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before. And the audience reaction -- from the former good-natured 'look-he's-dipped-the-bouquet-in-the-dirty-oil' laughter to the sudden roar of genuine surprise and delight -- was instant and electric. Suddenly, it was we who were eighty years behind the times, belated recipients of a moment of magic. Director, acrobat, actor, gag-writer, cinematographer, stuntman... for the first time Buster Keaton was set free into the universe of his own imagination, with confidence, grace and meticulous inventive brilliance, and before our eyes -- how could we not know it? -- a star was born.Even more incredible to learn, and yet true, is the fact that Keaton himself rejected and suppressed this first film as insufficiently original, holding up release for a year: no-one ever saw it at the time. He knew he could do better and, unbelievably, he was right. But that's another story...

What amazes me in every Buster Keaton short is how good the physical action is. In 'The High Sign' he has the perfect setting to show us his tricks. In a house where there must be a secret escape in every room he has to escape from a couple of guys who do not like him very much because he betrayed them. He had to kill a certain person but faked the whole thing.The story in a Buster Keaton short is not that important. Once he starts doing those great things on screen I don't want it to end. The camera is able to see four rooms at the same time and Keaton moves from room to room, through walls and ceilings. It is all great.