Spite Marriage (1929) Reviews

• Keaton's athleticism would be enough

  morrisonhimself2004-12-26

  Though not of the quality of "The General," an almost perfect movie, "Spite Marriage" is worth watching both for the fun and for the historical value of its being Keaton's last silent. Co-star Dorothy Sebastian deserves a medal both for her performance and for putting up with being knocked about so. So many of Keaton's leading ladies get treated very physically, surely part of the auditions was a test of their good-natured sportsmanship -- and probably their physical conditioning, too. Dorothy Sebastian's character is not very sympathetic at first, but she learns, and when she has to assist in her own rescue, she is adorable, cute as the proverbial button. Keaton, though, is the real reason to watch, this or almost everything else he is in. He ranks among the top of the certifiable geniuses of motion picture making, with an unfailing sense of timing, with uncanny physical control, and with an understanding of what was (and is) funny that the studio bosses of his latter career should have paid attention to. Even with the worst material, with which he was saddled in so many of his talkies, Keaton and his abilities and talents still stand out, are still memorable. Buster Keaton will deserve our awe forever.

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• Another reason Keaton was the greatest comedian of the 20s!

  Edisone2004-12-27

  The story isn't much, but Buster packs every scene with so many gags that you don't mind. It's easy to see why he was so successful, until MGM stuck him with stories that were totally unsuitable. The original score is fantastic, here - it includes a great deal of popular music and makes commentary on the situations, but the meaning will be lost on most modern viewers (I collect records from that period, so I recognize most all of it); even so, it moves the action right along and gives us a rare chance to experience a silent film just as it was presented to contemporary audiences. No cheesy piano accompaniment, here! The sound effects are well done, and used sparingly. The shipboard scenes could have been trimmed a bit; they seem to drag. Otherwise, time flies during this movie - you won't regret watching it! Just compare it with the average sound 'comedy' which Hollywood produced until 1932 or so, and you'll realize how they lost the art of making good films for a while. It's a crime that Keaton wasn't given the chance to produce his own talkies, because he might have changed the whole concept of what made a good SOUND comedy! It's a wonder that audiences didn't rebel against the boring, static, yawnful talk-fests that early sound comedies became; maybe the novelty of Talkies really WAS enough to bring them into the theaters. I'd haven given this a 10, except for the draggy ship scenes - but the ending is satisfyingly Keatonesque!

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• Hearty recommendation of a little seen film

  jimmyooo1998-11-23

  Although it is not a masterpiece in a league with "The General" or "The Navigator", "Spite Marriage" does contains several of the funniest moments Buster Keaton ever committed to film. I find that this picture serves as an ideal introduction to Keaton for my friends who are not fans of silent pictures. One such friend commented after viewing it, that it was "the most consistently hilarious movie he had ever seen." Buster Keaton's final silent picture, it contains a vintage Vitaphone musical setting.

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• Worth Watching, & Has Some Very Good Sequences

  Snow Leopard2002-11-22

  This isn't bad at all, as long as you don't hold it up to the standard that Keaton set in the features he made on his own. It has some very good sequences that make up for the more routine stretches, and it shows enough of Buster's comic genius to be worthwhile. Even when the gags are not especially creative, he gets as much mileage out of them as anyone could have. The premise of the "Spite Marriage" is rather flimsy at best, and in other hands it probably would not have been even this good. It actually starts out pretty well, as the first part moves at a good pace, and includes a very good sequence with Buster's hapless character trying to take part in a play. It begins to peter out in the middle, though, as the premise begins to wear thin. For some reason, the bedroom sequence from this portion seems to be the best-remembered portion of the movie, but it really isn't one of the better parts of the film at all. But things pick up again in the last part, when the story takes a couple of unexpected turns, and the comedy also improves. To be sure, it is a shame that Keaton was forced into the studio mold in pictures like this. It worked for many, but not for a unique talent like Buster. Still, at least this time the result is a generally entertaining movie with more than enough laughs to make it worth watching for anyone who enjoys silent comedies.

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• Presage of things to come?

  Igenlode Wordsmith2006-03-08

  Well, it had to happen some time; in the course of a year's experience at MGM, Buster Keaton's features have finally left youth behind, and left it hard and fast. In "The Cameraman" his character was still the dreamy boy -- but that famous angular face has filled out into a sculpted adult mask, alabaster assuming the opaque authority of marble; no longer playing a college student but a nervy man in his thirties, this is the mature Keaton who will become familiar from the publicity material of the new decade. He has abruptly grown into those strong bones at last. The alteration is not unbecoming, but it's undoubtedly somewhat marked. As to why, precisely, I found myself speculating so extensively during the first half of the film on the changes in Keaton's personal appearance... I'm afraid it was because I didn't find it very funny. The opening scenes have their moments, certainly. Dorothy Sebastian gets good material and can act, and so can Keaton -- when he's allowed. But too much of the humour I found simply to be farcical clowning: in an earlier film, the routine with the hats, for example, might have lasted a second or so for a throwaway laugh, but here it's milked far beyond what it can bear, and much of the other business I felt to be equally forced. There are moments that fly past with Keaton's old lightness of touch, such as the revelation of the true source of his elegant clothing, but there seems to be a general feeling that if a joke is worth doing once, it is worth labouring to death. The sequence in which 'Elmer' disrupts the performance of the Civil War melodrama was, for me, more a matter of cringing than laughter; it's only fair to say that these sentiments were very definitely not shared by those in the seats nearby, and it may well just be a case of my aversion to the destructive nature of slapstick humour. But what I love about Keaton isn't his ability to fall over things and knock things down -- any comic worth his salt can do that -- it's the ingenuity and resourceful illogic of his invention at its best, and there's precious little of that on show here. Fortunately, matters improve thereafter, as he is allowed a little more resource. Miss Sebastian shines during the restaurant scene, with Buster as second fiddle, and he is able to advance his relationship with his 'wife' during this section of the film into something a little more complex than fatuous knock-kneed idolatry. I have to confess that I didn't find the scene where he tries endlessly to put her to bed to be as classic as it's apparently held, although I did appreciate his typically Keatonesque solution to the chair problem, but the film definitely picks up from around this point. The real enjoyment for me, however, only started when Elmer and the girl are left alone on the yacht together; it's almost as if a script that has been written to date by somebody else is taken over by an inspiration that's characteristically Keaton's, as both he and his character rise to the occasion. It occurs to me in passing to wonder if isolation of the filming crew aboard the yacht could possibly have helped foil studio interference..? But maybe it's simply that this is the Keaton we're used to, coming up with wonderfully complex schemes, disabling an entire crew of villains one by one or launching himself intrepidly into the unknown mysteries of the rigging. I was struck by the difference in tone between the sympathetic comedy of this section, where he tries to reduce sail with the help of the girl and the handicap of their joint ignorance, and the earlier, clumsy, 'varnishing' sequence, in which he is purely inept and we are expected to find it funny. If the 'adrift alone' theme echoes "The Navigator", then the final knock-down fight inevitably recalls "Battling Butler"; as in that film, Keaton produces not only an athletic but a well-acted confrontation, as Elmer faces up to an opponent tall enough and strong enough to hold him ineffectual at arm's-length... armed only with bantam courage, and the luck and resolve that enable him to survive and keep coming back for more even as he visibly tires. And the payoff in the final line of this scene repaid, for me, all the clumsy physical clowning of the stage scenes earlier! (I must add that as a satire on overwrought drama, I actually find the depiction itself of the play "Carolina" quite funny; it's Buster's distinctly unsubtle involvement that grates on me so.) At the start of "Spite Marriage", I'd have been hard put to rate it above a wavering 5 or 6, with the low comedy of scenes such as the riding encounter definitely toward the low end of that scale. I was pleasantly surprised to find it veering upwards as it went on, into the territory of 7 or above, and the ending I'd generally rate at an 8. (The return of the hat gag, I have to say, was not to my taste!) However, I cannot in all conscience give the film as a whole a ranking above about seven on my personal scale: worth watching, worth recommending to others, but not really worth going through discomfort or inconvenience to see. Edit: re-watching this film with the original soundtrack (the love theme, "I'm Afraid of You", is certainly appropriate!), I'm impressed above all by Dorothy Sebastian's performance; now that I've seen his later work, Keaton's performance and material here actually reminds me more of his sound-era pictures. You may not be able to hear his voice, but you can certainly see a lot of the same mannerisms appearing...

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