One Week

'One Week (1920)' was the first of Buster Keaton's independent two-reelers, though 'The High Sign (1921)' was filmed first and shelved until the following year. The story starts out where most romantic comedies end: with a picturesque wedding ceremony, during which adoring friends and relatives toss confetti and, oddly, second-hand footwear. The lucky groom (Keaton) and his bride (Sybil Seely) strike out for their new home, purchased by a well-meaning uncle. Of course, only in a Keaton short must the husband and wife be forced to construct their own house, utilising a do-it-yourself kit that goes awry when the bride's former lover switches the numbers around. The resultant dwelling would not have looked out of place in 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920),' though Keaton is evidently proud of his handiwork, and is thus prepared to overlook the most minor of blunders (such as having the front door on the second-floor). This short served as a trial-run of sorts for the feature 'Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928),' for here we see an early version of Keaton's famous "saved-by-the-window" falling wall stunt.

'One Week' is one of Keaton's finest shorts, with no shortage of imagination, and a continuous string of episodic gags. In one scene, our hero rather coarsely knocks out a traffic policeman, and it's probably no coincidence that the victim is a Charles Chaplin-lookalike. Many of the Keaton's films utilise aspects of engineering, such as 'The Electric House (1922),' in which the actor is commissioned to update a client's home with state-of-the-art technology. In 'One Week,' the product of Keaton's labours doesn't appear quite so impressive, though the house does misbehave is equally hilarious ways. In a vigorous windstorm, the entire building is transformed into a deliriously-spinning carousel, the inhabitants thrown across the room with almost brutal centrifugal force. Leading lady Sybil Seely impressively keeps up with Keaton's comedic antics, even contributing a few laughs of her own, rather than serving only as a beautiful romantic interest. Not that Seely didn't have the "beautiful" aspect covered, the film's show-stopping moment seeing the actress drop her bar of soap while bathing in the tub. A modest cameraman's hand spares us the details, however.

An early Buster Keaton short which still has an enormous amount of charm all these years later, and which has plenty of laughs throughout its running time.

First there's a wedding, and the newlyweds almost don't make it to their wedding night; and then there is the portable house they have to start from scratch! Of course this means the house looks wrong, it falls down, lots of stunts and scenes are set up to make the audience gasp and chuckle, and so on.

'One Week' is a really fun film and one which is timeless. Keaton would make many more shorts and his great feature-length movies were yet to come, but this is charming snapshot of what was to come.

Buster Keaton had been making films for three years, minus some time he was in the army, but this was his second film independent of his old friend and partner Roscoe Arbuckle. And it has a touch of something unseen in film up to that point - engineering as comedy. In 1920 comedy is just emerging from the pie throwing and pants kicking phase, and Buster is already on a completely different level from his colleagues.

Buster, still a bachelor himself, is shown emerging from a church with his new bride (Sybil Seely). They don't have credited names, for this is not a personal journey for the main characters. The trouble starts immediately with Handy Hank, resentful that the bride turned him down and then chose Buster. Oddly enough this guy is driving them to their destination from the church, and that turns out to be a lot with a portable house deposited on it, both being a wedding gift from Buster's uncle. There they find the house in boxes which they need to assemble themselves in the order of the numbers on the boxes. Handy Hank sees his chance for revenge by changing the numbers on the boxes so that the house will be assembled out of order.

The result is hilarious. The roof is on sideways, the porch is lopsided, there is a door to nowhere on the second floor that leads to the outside, and the rectangular windows have somehow installed to be a trapezoid, which is something that would be impossible just from incorrect installation. The kitchen sink has been installed on the outside of the house, but no problem, Buster has installed it such that it swivels like a revolving door and can thus double as a door and a sink that can be, in bad weather, moved inside. What about the foundation? Well, that becomes a problem later.

I'd highly recommend this as an introduction to Keaton even before you go back and watch his shorts done with Arbuckle and before his later independent efforts. It is much more carefully constructed than poor Buster's house. P. S. - Such portable homes were commonly sold by catalogue in the United States during the first half of the 20th century.

Man, this 19-minute Buster Keaton short is almost too exhausting to watch as one crazy scene after another is shown. This is a wild and always-entertaining short, considered one of Buster's best. It's total lunacy.

Newlywed Buster and his bride (the pretty Sybil Sealey) get a "portable house" as a wedding present. When they get to the site, they find out they have to build the house themselves.

A poor loser who lost the girl, "Handy Hank," sabotages the house-building process by fouling up the numbered directions. When finished, the house is a little strange, to say the least! One look and you are guaranteed to laugh out loud. Anyway, there's work to be done decorating and adding a few more little things like th chimney or trying to fit a piano through a front window.

A calendar is shown throughout the movie and we see the daily "progress." Obstacles are many but the couple persists and kisses their way through all the problems.

Most of the film turns out to be sight gags and slapstick, especially when they have their "housewarming" at the end of the week and a big windstorm literally turns the house into a "merry-go-round."

If that isn't enough, you should see the ending when the train.......

A house. Not assembled. A young couple. And a week. One of the most seductive films of Buster Keaton. For imagination, for the feel to see an animation, for lovely-dramatic story - the storm has a lead role- for the end and for the trait of genius. Something sad - magic defines this short film. One of the lovely ones for its humor and for the beautiful way for explore the force of details.