Our Hospitality Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.5

Our Hospitality Blu-ray Movie Review

Buster Keaton’s family affair gets a warm Blu-ray welcome.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater February 28, 2011

Kino-Lorber is on a roll, reissuing yet another film from vaudevillian-turned-auteur Buster Keaton, the “Great Stone Face” of silent comedies. Our Hospitality, from 1923, marked a huge turn in Keaton’s career. After making his name as a gag-man and sidekick for Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, Keaton directed himself in several two-reel shorts, in which he perfected his language of visual comedy, with graceful pratfalls, dangerous stunts pulled off with mathematical precision, and a deadpan demeanor that allowed his audience to project their own emotions onto his scrappy characters. Only one thing was missing from his filmmaking arsenal: the ability to tell a sustained comedic story. Keaton tested the waters with Three Ages— three two-reelers stitched together with a shared theme—but Our Hospitality was his first real attempt at a feature-length story. Here, the Looney Toons-inspiring slapstick of his shorts is frequently replaced by more sophisticated situational comedy, the gags complementing the narrative rather than dominating it.

Peeking during prayer.

This is evident from the D.W. Griffith-inspired first reel, which is far more dramatic than anything Keaton had tried before. A series of intertitles explains that we’re about to be dropped into the middle of a blood feud between the Canfields and the McKays—an obvious allusion to the Hatfields and the McCoys—and the film opens in a creaky cabin on a stormy night in 1810, where the patriarch of the McKays is promptly shot and killed, leaving behind his wife and infant son, Willie. There are no laughs in this sequence whatsoever. Lightening flashes, rain pounds against the windows, and the baby, played by Keaton’s own son, screams in terror. Keaton is in full-on melodrama mode here, establishing that violence and danger are very real possibilities in the story to come.

We pick up 20 years later, and the mood is instantly lighter. Willie, who was sent to New York and raised by his aunt with no awareness of the feud, is now played by Keaton as a comically dapper city boy who wears the most ridiculously oversized top hat imaginable and coasts hilariously around town on a hobbyhorse—a primitive, pedal-less bicycle. When Willie gets a letter requesting him to come back to the Blue Ridge Mountains to claim his parents’ “estate”—which he imagines as a grand old Southern plantation—his aunt tells him about the feud and warns him to stay away from the still-vengeful Canfields. Bound for his hometown of Rockville, Willie boards a rickety open-air train—a reproduction of “Stephenson’s Rocket,” the first locomotive—and naturally ends up sitting next to none other than Virginia Canfield (Natalie Talmadge, Keaton’s wife), the daughter of the mint julep-sipping head of the Canfield clan, Clayton (Big Joe Roberts). See where this is going?

These scenes on the train are filled with subtle, clever gags, some of which prefigure the larger-scale locomotive stunts that Keaton would pull off in his 1927 classic, The General, like having the passenger cars split onto a separate track and then rejoin the main line in front of the engine. A lifelong train lover, Keaton has fun spoofing the less-than-glamorous difficulties of early on-rails travel, from the soot-spewing smokestack that covers the passengers’ faces in grime, to the absurdly bumpy ride and ever-present possibility of derailment. At one point, the engineer, played by Keaton’s father—this really was a family affair—is forced to stop the train and physically change the course of the tracks when he encounters a stubborn, immovable donkey. There’s also a great scene where a wily hillbilly tricks the engineer into throwing him free firewood.

The title Our Hospitality comes from the film’s central conceit: When the train arrives in Rockville, Virginia invites Willie over for dinner— she’s taken a shine to him—and although her father and brothers want nothing more than to put a bullet in his back, their code of courtesy prohibits them from harming him inside their house. Buster, of course, finally figures out who he’s dining with and, realizing that he’s safe inside, slyly figures out a way to spend the night. The scenes in the Canfield mansion are less physical than most of Keaton’s work, but incredibly funny, riffing on the intractable code of conduct that defines southern gentility.

It wouldn’t be a Buster Keaton film without an over-the-top, dangerous-looking action set-piece, though, and so the restrained social humor inside the house eventually gives way to a frenetic chase scene finale that has the Canfield brothers hot-footing it after Willie through the woods, down a cliff-face, along a river, and over a waterfall. This last locale is particularly impressive, as Keaton dangles from a log hanging over the edge of the falls and catches his love interest—who had fallen out of her rowboat—swinging her precariously to safety. Buster did all his own stunts as a matter of principle, and the behind-the-scenes stories of his productions almost always include accounts of potentially fatal accidents. While filming one scene in the river, the wire holding Keaton in place snapped, causing him to be swept down the whitewater rapids. When the production crew finally caught up to their director—who managed to grab some brush and drag himself onshore—he only had one concern: “Did you get it?”* And yes, the footage is in the final film.

*Edward McPherson, Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat, p.135.

Our Hospitality Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Once again, Kino-Lorber delivers an exceptional transfer of a silent classic from the 1920s. Like the company's Blu-ray reissues of The General, Steamboat Bill Jr., and the Sherlock Jr./Three Ages double feature, Our Hospitality looks fantastic in its upgrade to high definition, besting—by a country mile—any previous home video editions of the film. The transfer is presented in 1080i, but don't let the interlacing throw you off. This is most likely a necessity in order to compensate for a frame rate that wasn't exactly 24 fps, but I didn't notice any of the motion artifacts or aliasing that you sometimes expect to see on 1080i titles. In fact, if not for an indicator on my television, I never would've guessed the film was interlaced. The print itself is also in excellent condition. You'll see specks, minor vertical and horizontal scratches, and mild brightness flickering, but there are no major issues, like warping, heavy stains, or tears. As is Kino's custom, grain has been left fully intact and there has been no overt edge enhancement or contrast boosting. Clarity is not quite as refined as The General or Steamboat Bill, but there's plenty of detail in the period costumes and accoutrements. Likewise, the film's gradation is strong, with rich blacks and bright but not overblown whites. Most of the film has been given a light sepia cast, but there are also a few shots—during the opening nighttime sequence—that are tinted blue. There are no significant compression issues to report.

Do note that as it was nearly impossible to capture screenshots in 1080i, all of the screenshots in the review have been captured in 720p and do not represent the full resolution of the image.

Our Hospitality Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As usual, Kino has provided multiple audio/score options. The default track is a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix of a score by composer Carl Davis, which was recorded in 1984 for Thames Television and the U.K.'s Channel 4, and performed by the Thames Silents Orchestra. I have to say—this is perhaps my favorite score out of all the Buster Keaton films that have been released on Blu-ray so far. The main theme is memorable, the music complements— rather than overshadows—the onscreen action, and it has a rich, full sound, with crisp trumpets, low reedy cellos, and dizzying violins. The music is bled pleasingly into the rear channels, but if you'd prefer a front-and-center presentation, the disc also includes a just-as-strong 2.0 LPCM mixdown of the same track. Also available is the Donald Hunsberger score—which was commissioned by Kino for the 1995 VHS release of Our Hospitality— presented in Dolby Digital 2.0.

Our Hospitality Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Making Comedy Beautiful (1080i, 26:08): An informative visual essay about the making of Our Hospitality, complete with dissections of the action sequences. Narrated by Patricia Eliot Tobias.
• Hospitality (1080i, 55:23): A 49-minute alternate cut of the film, presumed to be a workprint. With optional introduction by Patricia Eliot Tobias.
• The Iron Mule (1080i, 19:25): A 1925 short, anonymously directed by the then-blacklisted Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, that features the train from Our Hospitality, as well as a few un-credited cameos by Keaton himself.
• Galleries: Includes a photo gallery with 32 stills and snapshot gallery of 32 on-set candids.

Our Hospitality Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you're a silent film fan, this Blu-ray of Buster Keaton's first true narrative full-length feature is an essential release that you've probably already pre- ordered. Enjoy! If, on the other hand, you're new to silents—or just discovering Keaton—Our Hospitality is a wonderful place to start. Here's hoping Kino delivers The Navigator in short order. Highly recommended!