He doesn't draw attention to it, so don't blink or you'll miss it. In this age of digital trickery and fantastic stunt work by trained professionals, this stunt is still amazing, not just because it looks impossible to do with such effortless grace, but because Keaton "throws away" the gag. Just then, a car zooms by the hapless fugitive, and in the wink of an eye, Keaton grabs hold of the back of the car and is lifted into the air and out of the frame, now safely hitchhiking on the back of the speeding vehicle. He stops in the middle of a road, just as the cops are making their way through the alleyway. In long shot, Keaton runs towards the camera through an alleyway. So public sensitivity was high regarding scenes of terrorist acts in movies but Cops didn't ignite any controversy over this subplot since Keaton kept the action moving too fast for audiences to really make any topical connections.įrom beginning to end, the short is consistently hilarious and inspired with several famous scenes, especially one where Keaton is fleeing his pursuers. Just two years earlier, thirty people were killed and many more injured when an anarchist exploded a bomb on Wall Street. The distributor for Cops was not particularly overjoyed either about the terrorist bomb sequence and how audiences would react to it. Thus, Keaton's probable inspiration for Cops wasn't exactly a laughing matter. Arbuckle was eventually exonerated, with an official apology from the jury, but his career was effectively over because of the negative publicity he attracted from the court case.
Buster keaton cops trial#
At the time, his friend and mentor, Fatty Arbuckle, was undergoing a third trial for manslaughter (the first two trials ended in hung juries).
What wasn't funny were the serious circumstances under which Keaton made Cops. It's a situation worthy of Kafka but played for comedy. Thus sets off one of Keaton's most inventive short films, an epic chase that finds an innocent, if unobservant, man being pursued by hundreds of uniformed policemen. Keaton, oblivious to the danger, lights his smoke and casually throws away the bomb.right into a crowd of policemen. The "light" is actually the lit fuse of a bomb, thrown by an anarchist from a rooftop, intended to wreck havoc on the city's celebration. Needing a match, Keaton finds a light that has plopped down next to him on the carriage. Thinking he should be looking his best, Keaton decides to light a cigarette. En route, Keaton inadvertently gets jammed in a policeman's parade.
Buster keaton cops full#
So here's Buster, lazily guiding a wagon full of furniture, towards a future that will be pleasing to his girlfriend. Then he ends up buying furniture that also isn't for sale. Without any effort, Keaton seizes a golden opportunity: he pays a con artist for a horse and wagon that don't belong to him and aren't for sale. Keaton plays an easy-going soul whose girlfriend refuses to have anything to do with him until he makes something of himself (a problem that also plagued Harold Lloyd in his pictures). Buster Keaton proved that paranoia can be funny in the Franz Kafka-like two-reel comedy, Cops (1922).
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