Spite Marriage

Spite Marriage (Edward Sedgwick, Buster Keaton, 1929) Buster Keaton's second film for M-G-M was supposed to be a full sound film, but was made silent—sound (and a weakening of Keaton's control in the production) would come with his next film Free and Easy.

Ingenue Trilby Drew (the very game Dorothy Sebastian) is the toast of Broadway in her latest play "Carolina" but off-stage she's being shadowed by a diminutive well-tailored suitor. He's there at functions for her on the edges of crowds, a horse-ride in the park has him waiting by the road unsteadily simultaneously trying to tip his hat and keep control of his horse.

He is Elmer (Buster Keaton), a "presser" at a local cleaners, borrowing the fine clothes of his clientele to make a good impression and then sticking them back on the hanger for pick-up, pocketing the fee rather than putting it in the cash register, so that he can live in the manner to which his beloved is accustomed.

That includes going to every evening performance of "Carolina" where he sits in the front row and pines and applauds every entrance and exit...even taking advantage of a case of mistaken identity to appear as an extra, just to be that much closer to her. Trilby finds Elmer a nuisance (he is, after all, a stalker), but when her co-star begins stepping out with another woman, Trilby finds him useful. He is, after all, always within arm's reach.

Just to stick the knife in a little deeper, she decides to marry the overwhelmed and overawed Elmer. But, it can't come to any good, and after two unconsummated wedding nights, Trilby's manager tells Elmer that he must leave so that Trilby can save face, sue for divorce and salvage her career. Elmer, heart-broken, decides to leave and, circumstances being what they are in a Keaton comedy, he finds himself on the very same private yacht that Trilby is on to get away from the publicity.

Keaton, a girl, and a boat. Never a good combination if you want a restful sea cruise. Some of it might seem familiar if you've seen The Navigator, but there's a funny sequence when Keaton is below in the engine room, when a porthole opens and water starts gushing in.

It is interesting to watch this last silent film of Keaton's. You get the impression he's slowing down a little—not in his speed, he still runs like a bat out of Hell. It seems like the chances he takes are a bit more careful, like he was being pressured from M-G-M to do a little less stunt-work to protect their investment (he was 34 at the time of Spite Marriage).

I wanted to talk about this in the post on Free and Easy (which will be someday), but it's more appropriate to talk about this now. This is probably the last film where Keaton seems like a young man, naive and inviting of the audience's sympathy and support. He seems like a moon-calf, a young innocent far less sophisticated than the world of sharps and authority figures who will pursue, take advantage of, and, at times, overwhelm him.

And it's because he has no voice. With his next film, he will protest his treatment in his low gravelly, basso voice, which makes him seem older, but not wiser, and so his protestations have a whiny, helpless quality, which the deeper voice works against. Keaton's characters will seem less innocent and more pathetic, inviting audience scorn, rather than sympathy (this will become especially true with Free and Easy, showing that M-G-M had absolutely no idea what to do with him, once they sought to "improve" him, and tried to make him fit the mold of the day. Or what they thought was the mold of the day—a cookie-cutter template to improve returns. What works is for Keaton to be mute, his "stone-face" betraying little emotion, until he up and hits somebody in the face, which shocks and provokes a laugh. With the silent movie format, he is surprising, which is the essence of comedy; if he tells you how he's feeling, his character comes across as a complainer and a grouchy complainer at that.

No, Keaton is better and more effective silent, and Spite Marriage will be the last full-length example of just how effective that formula could be.