The Scarecrow (Buster Keaton, 1920)
The Scarecrow is a silent short film made by and starring Buster Keaton. The film shows two guys living together in a very small but effective house. They both compete to win the love of a farmer’s daughter. After getting chased by a dog, believed to have rabies, he is forced to dress and pretend to be a scarecrow. His disguise works great until he falls over. The farmer and the other roommate chase after Keaton as he escapes with the girl on a motorcycle. They find a priest and get married on the motorcycle.
The film is clearly a comedy with slight romance since both farmhands are competing for the love of the farmer’s daughter. Like most silent comedy films it includes chase sequences with elaborate set design to confuse and surprise the audience. In The Scarecrow, while Keaton is being chased by a dog, he is running around the small house using lots of little hidden ways to get out. Much like One Week, in this film Buster Keaton exhibits auteur qualities as it is quite obvious that it is he who made it. The film is silent with a funny upbeat track (would’ve been added outside of the film by a live band or separate sound recording) and there elaborate sets which are seen in every Buster Keaton film.
Films in America in 1920 were mostly made for money and little had a true meaning behind them. However, Buster Keaton could’ve been trying to simply make his audience laugh because he was an entertainer. The film uses various techniques to help create the world of the film. Clearly a lot of planning went in to the complicated small house and training the dog to run across the top of the ruins. The film shows the farmhands as a lower class than the farmers a they live in a very small house and get chased off by the farmer.
Keaton creates humour through his gags which are achieved by over the top performance and interesting Mise-En-Scène. When the second farmhand (played by Joe Roberts) sits on a car, it tilts upwards creating a joke about his weight. In real life, the car wouldn’t actually tilt but Keaton uses special effects to create this moment of humour.
I personally enjoyed this film, however I enjoyed some of his other films like One Week and The High Sign more. It was still humorous but felt like it didn’t have enough expressionism compared to a film like One Week where they turned the whole house around. I particularly was impressed by the way the house is set up at the start with lots of mechanisms all in one and swinging food. My rating for The Scarecrow is 4/5.