‘Seven Chances’ (1925) — a Buster Keaton Caper That Cannot be Denied

Sam: It’s our first silent comedy!

Will: We’ve always harboured a shared appreciation for the genre.

Sam: Ever since we watched Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman during one of our earliest film weekends, back when we young(er).

Will: I just remember enjoying it a huge amount. Silent comedies are so damn pure — they’re carefully honed packages of wit and talent that also have the added virtue of being super old and stuff. I like looking at the elderly people in the cast and thinking ‘THEY WERE BORN ABOUT 1850! WOW!’

Sam: You do enjoy pointing out that the cast will be dead now.

Will: So dead. Except the babies. They might be alive. But super old. Weird.

Sam: Buster Keaton is probably my favourite. The General, Sherlock Jr. — so many classics.

Will: He had a winningly sad-looking face. And an incredible ability to build gags to ever-increasing levels of absurdity and technical impressiveness. And, more than anything, he refused to fake anything — the death-defying stunts were always done by him without camera trickery or distracting cuts.

Sam: He’s like if Tom Cruise and Jackie Chan had a baby, and that baby was born before its parents, and inspired the parents.

Will: Wow.

Sam: So, as I was keen to watch another Keaton film, here we are with Seven Chances. It opens with Keaton repeatedly failing to declare his love to a girl over an entire year. It’s a great opening. It transitions through the seasons with Buster still failing to make his move. While this is going on, a rich uncle of his passes away and bequeaths him $7 million on the condition that he’s married by 7pm on the day of his 27th birthday. And guess when that is?

Will: I saw the film, Sam.

Sam: You could at least try and play along. But yes, it was the same day. So, when he then bungles his proposal to his sweetheart, he’s on a mission to find someone, anyone, to marry him.

Will: I can relate.

Sam: Which turns out to be quite difficult. Who’d have thought it? Things escalate and an ad is put in the paper requesting a bride, and a mob of women in wedding dresses then chase him around. For a long time. It’s glorious.

Will: But the question hovers above it all — will he find his way back to his true lady love in time!? As a premise it’s simple — but supremely ripe for comedy.

Sam: Very. But they play it straight for a good portion of the film. There’s a couple of visual gags dotted here and there, but no elongated set pieces. They saved that for the finale.

Will: You said early on when we were watching it that this ‘wasn’t essential Buster Keaton’... but I think by the end we’d been won over. The increasing absurdity as the films nears the climax was just so bloody entertaining.

Sam: Sherlock Jr. also had a fantastic chase finale, but this had the image of hundreds — no exaggeration — crazed brides chasing him. God knows what they were going to do when they caught him. The highlight was Keaton running down a hillside chased by a whole load of boulders, dodging this way and that.

Will: The great thing was that presumably the brides were played by extras who all dreamed of being the one lucky actress who manages to become a big star… while in the film they all dream of being the one lucky bride who manages to marry Buster Keaton. It fits perfectly!

Sam: It did, and although it felt like the whole film was centered around the one gag of the bride mob, I didn’t feel short-changed. The film was only a brisk 56 mins.

Will: It didn’t need to be any longer. And, given the physical strain the stunts put on Keaton, an extra thirty minutes of footage may have polished him off for good.

Sam: What was your favourite moment?

Will: The moment that stuck with me the most was when he does a sort of crazy head-first dive into some water as he’s trying to escape. I’m not sure why it’s so entertaining since it’s not the most complex stunt at all. There was just something brilliant about his fearless commitment to flinging himself headfirst.

Sam: I think we might have liked this film too much.

Will: What of it? Buster Keaton is a genius! He is, for my money, the most entertaining runner in movie history… ahead of even Tom Cruise. I’d happily watch ninety minutes of him dashing around aimlessly.

Sam: So that’s it then, this film is genius? End of?

Will: Yep. THERE WERE HUNDREDS OF WOMEN RUNNING AROUND DRESSED IN WEDDING DRESSES.

Sam: That will stick with me

Will: So, what’s next?

Sam: Detour, a noir B-Movie from 1945, that should, by all accounts, have been forgotten, but has managed to embed itself into film history through its sheer memorable, atmospheric quality.

Will: Sounds good. They should put that description on the Blu-ray packaging.

Films Referenced

Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)

Seven Chances (Buster Keaton, 1925)

The Freshman (Sam Taylor and Fred C. Newmeyer, 1925)

The General (Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton, 1926)

The next film: Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945)