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To look at Go West, like the much more celebrated The General, is to see one of the glories Buster Keaton's silent period -- and realize what the movies lost when MGM took over his career. Not that everything he did during this period was perfect, but as Go West -- one of his (undeservedly) less celebrated films of this era -- demonstrated, at least he knew what he was aiming for when he directed his own movies. And here, he achieved something special in terms of mixing comedy and pathos, working with a plot that reached out to the western genre, and back to D. W. Griffith's rural dramas, and all of it shaped to Keaton's special screen persona, amid physical oomedy, sight gags, and a cliffhanger plot element (will he save his beloved cow?). It's a movie whose achievements seem all the more impressive over time, even with the oft-parodied elements present, because Keaton's presence, behind as well as in front of the camera, gives it the spark that keeps it seeming fresh and bright, and funny, across eight decades.