(1922)
4
Dan Jardine
Buster Keaton produced dozens of silent shorts, but Cops (1922) stands above most of them, for its masterfully developed narrative flow, wide range of visual jokes, incessantly manic energy, and bitterly funny conclusion. Keaton was distinguised from his peers Charles Chaplin and Harold Lloyd by his unblinking refusal to indulge in exaggerated reaction shots (he wasn't called The Great Stone Face for nothing), as well as an unparalleled choreography of comic action. Keaton's athleticism is put to work early and often in Cops, resulting in some of the era's most inspired sight gags. From point-of-view and identity-confusion tricks that result in Keaton's character's unwittingly hijacking a horse and buggy full of a policeman's entire household possessions, to physically demanding stunts pulled while trying to evade an entire police force, Keaton displays the mastery of silent film form that he would later develop with more sophistication in such full-length features as Sherlock Jr. and The General. In Cops, Keaton employs a familiar hook on which to hang the action (one he would return to in The General): the young man who will go to almost any lengths to win the love of his lady. However, unlike Chaplin, whose socially conscious films often displayed a Dickensian marshmallow heart, Keaton resolutely refused to stoop to overly sentimental gestures. Constantly subverting the predominant romanticism of the age, Keaton was careful to disarm potentially sappy images with slapstick gestures or melancholy plot twists, as he does in the ending of this frantically energetic film.
cast-crew for Cops on AllMovie
Cops (1922)
