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Loosely intended as a satire of D.W. Griffith's Intolerance, The Three Ages was Buster Keaton's first attempt at a full length comedy feature. The only similarities to Intolerance are the opening "book" scene and the fact that similar stories through the ages are edited together into a complete film. Keaton's reasoning for appropriating this style was that if it didn't succeed as a feature film, it could be reduced to three two-reelers. Fortunately, The Three Ages succeeds brilliantly as a comedy and contains some of the funniest routines I've seen in any of Keaton's film. There is nothing unique or daring about the story lines. They are simple boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl plots, but the period satires are riotous and set the standard for future works by Mel Brooks and all films of this genre. However, I don't believe that anyone has ever topped this comedy. No one can play the lovable goof like Keaton and the stunts in this film are some of his best. In addition, Wallace Beery's appearance as Keaton's rival adds to this film's appeal. Anyone who thinks that comedy from the 1920's cannot be appreciated by modern audiences needs to see this movie.

I'd have to rate this as slightly above-average Keaton fare. It shows Buster trying to romance the girl away from Wallace Beery, and what would have transpired if the story had taken place in (1) the Stone Age; (2) The Roman Age, and (3) The Modern Age.

I liked them in that order, too, with more laughs with the older periods of time, although I laughed at the hardest at a couple of segments in the Roman Age. My favorite was the chariot race held in the sand. That had a number of clever things in the segment. The brief bit with the lion was funny, too, sort of a parody of the Biblical story of Daniel in the lion's den.

They were smart only going five minutes or so with each age and then going back with the story each time. Each "age" had four or five segments in total.

Nothing hilarious but definitely worth your time if you are checking out silent film comedies

This is a pleasant and funny combination of slapstick and satire, period humor and romantic comedy. It does not have quite the number of sustained chase/stunt sequences as in most of Keaton's features, but instead there are a lot of fine subtle gags of all different kinds.

In each of the "Three Ages", Buster and Wallace Beery vie for the affections of the same woman, with amusing and unpredictable results. The simple romantic triangle theme sets up a lot of good material, on the one hand lending itself to a lot of gags about the unchanging nature of romantic courtship, and on the other hand being used for a lot of deliberate anachronisms that are often extremely funny. Beery makes a nice foil for Keaton, and the girl's parents also have some good moments.

This one usually gets lost in the crowd among so many brilliant Keaton masterpieces, but it works very well and is definitely worth seeing for any fan of silent comedy.

The more time I spend with old films, the more of a giant I see Keaton to be. I'm beginning to think that we all need to see a lot of him, which is why I wandered into this. It seems to have been made only because they had access to a Roman set.

The setup is that a courtship story is presented in three eras: a cave-man setup, a Roman context and a modern one. All are based on film notions of those eras of course. Unlike most movie humor of the time, the joke here isn't in embellishing the story with humorous decoration. Its in the difference among the stories.

Its a clever piece of what I call folding, and you will see at least one scene here that I swear is quoted in "Rashomon."

So there's the idea of the thing, which is worthwhile, but now I've explained it, you hardly have to see it. The jokes are trite. But there is one scene that I recall over and over. I think Keaton did it elsewhere and several others too, but here it is the best.

He's driving a car, a rickety one to his girl's house. (This is in the modern setting, obviously.) He hits a bump and the car falls to pieces. And I just don't mean the wheels fall off, the car quite literally disassembles into the parts that went into the factory and there he sits among hundreds of items. I have no idea how he did this. The car really is moving as a car, and then in an instant it is in pieces.

Wonderful.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

First time of seeing Buster Keaton's first feature film and I have to admit I liked it a lot and only wish I'd stumbled across it years ago. The Rohauer blurb at the start warns that the Three Ages single nitrate print was rediscovered and salvaged in 1954 just in time before combustion, and many frames that seemed hopelessly glued together were separated. So, it's rocky viewing in places, but I've seen and survived much worse.

It would have been OK as the 3 short films but as a take on Intolerance it's inventive and funny from the start to the finish: In the Stone Age with baddie Wallace Beery riding an elephant and goodie Buster riding a pet brontosaurus; In the Roman Age Buster riding a chariot with wheel locks and adapted for sledging, No Parking signs in Latin; In this technological Age of Speed Need and Greed his car beautifully falls to bits at the first hump. Both him and Beery are after the Girl through the ages, a never ending tussle. Favourite bit: As the caveman he gets knocked backward over a cliff edge but still blows a kiss to the camera - an amazing second or two!

Great stuff, reaffirming my love of silent film comedy.