Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Seven Chances Blu-ray Movie Review

Buster finds a bride.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater December 6, 2011

Buster Keaton supposedly considered his fifth silent feature, 1925’s Seven Chances, to be one of his worst films, but this is just another case of an artist being unjustly hard on himself. The former vaudevillian’s reticence about the picture stemmed largely from the fact that he hadn’t personally conceived the project and wasn’t too keen on the story. His producer, Joe Schenck, had paid $25,000 for the rights to a 1916 Broadway flop and basically forced Keaton to adapt the less-than-inspired source material for the screen, with contractually-obligated help from a co-director who would be fired just two weeks into the making of the film.

While the movie is notably less ambitious and awe-inspiring than, say, Steamboat Bill, Jr. or The General—and though it’s extremely short at a scant 56 minutes—Seven Chances is an underappreciated farce that presents Keaton at his most emotionally sympathetic, his “Great Stone Face” chiseled into an expression of permanent anxiety. It also features an unforgettably crazy chase sequence climax that involves hundreds of money-grubbing old maids, a precarious dangle from a crane, locomotive near-misses, and an epic avalanche that has Keaton weaving and dodging between tumbling six-foot-tall boulders. Leave it to Buster—a bonafide slapstick alchemist—to turn a leaden story into comic gold.

Buster blows another chance...

And let’s be frank; the story really doesn’t give Keaton much to work with, as it’s based on the weary gimmick of a loveless schmuck who has to get married in a hurry in order to claim a massive inheritance. Ah yes, that old chestnut, most recently trotted out and dusted off for 1999’s Chris O’Donnell/Renée Zellweger vehicle, The Bachelor. Buster plays Jimmy Shannon, a stoke broker whose business with his partner, Billy Meekin (T. Roy Barnes), is about to go belly up thanks to some poor, possibly illegal investments. We watch as they inspect a length of ticker tape together and then look up at one another nervously. Their careers, their reputations, possibly even their freedom—everything is on the line, and the possibilities aren’t promising.

It’s fortuitous, then, that brilliant character actor Snitz Edwards shows up as a lawyer trying hilariously—in vain, initially—to deliver a copy of Jimmy’s grandfather’s will. The details are simple: Jimmy will receive a fortune of $7 million, providing he’s married by seven o’clock on the evening of his twenty-seventh birthday. (One wonders if gramps was some kind of crazed numerologist.) The only trouble? In a doubling down of unlikely coincidences, it is Jimmy’s 27th birthday. He’s got half a day to get hitched, and as we know from the film’s opening Technicolor montage— which shows him unable to profess his feelings to his to his winsome girlfriend Mary (Ruth Dwyer) over the span of a year—Jimmy is a clumsy dunce when it comes to the ways of love.

The easiest solution to this particular dilemma, of course, is for Jimmy to finally work up the courage to propose to Mary—which he does—but inevitably he bungles his words when he asks for her hand, causing her to turn him down in no uncertain terms. Although Mary’s mother eventually convinces her to reconsider, Jimmy is incommunicado, his office phone accidentally placed off the hook. (By this point, the chance twists of fate are staggering.) Dejected, but forced to find a wife to save his business, Jimmy goes to the local country club with his partner, an inveterate ladies’ man who knows of seven eligible bachelorettes—the “seven chances” of the title. Jimmy strikes out spectacularly with all seven, sadly crossing their names off a checklist, and in these middle scenes Keaton is his most loveably vulnerable, visibly wounded when the ladies laugh off—or more aggressively dismiss—his earnest marriage offers.

Later, Jimmy has similar luck scouting out the town proper, but this time it’s he who dismisses two would-be brides, a Jewess who speaks no English and an African American played cringe-inducingly by a white woman in blackface. (He also gets his flat hat busted over his head when he confuses Julian Eltinge—a well-known cross-dresser in the 1920s—for an actual woman.) The racial attitudes in these scenes may seem in uncomfortably bad taste today, but I’ll give Keaton the benefit of the doubt and assume that Jimmy rejects the Jewish woman because she can’t speak English—not because she’s a Jew—and can’t marry the African American woman because there were still laws prohibiting interracial marriage in many states. There are no apparent justifications, however, for the character of Mary’s blackfaced house servant, portrayed as a simpleton who rides around awkwardly on a bony, molasses-slow horse. That we can only take as a sour reminder of the times.

Get past the casual racism and you’re in for a thrilling finale—the kind of large-scale action sequence that was Keaton’s specialty. It starts when Billy puts a notice in the afternoon paper advertising Jimmy’s quandary, which causes hundreds of wannabe gold-diggers to turn up at a local church—all wearing white wedding attire—in hopes of sharing the inherited millions. The displeased minister turns them all out onto the street, and in a frenzy they chase Jimmy through a train yard—here, Keaton hangs precariously from an out-of-control crane—and then up into the hills outside of town, where Jimmy inadvertently starts a massive avalanche. Even knowing the boulders were made of papier-mâché, this scene looks fantastically dangerous, as Keaton sprints downhill, trying to dodge and outrun the barreling rocks. Will Jimmy make it back to Mary in time? I think you know the answer to that one, but the particular joy of Seven Chances—and, really, all of Keaton’s silent classics—is the way he breathlessly takes us from one surprise to the next on the way to the inevitable.

Seven Chances Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Kino's Blu-ray treatment of Keaton's films has been uniformly excellent, but Seven Chances might just be the company's best-looking Buster release yet. After a thorough restoration overseen by the Library of Congress, the film is in fantastic shape. The source materials must've been fairly clean to begin with, because the print is sometimes remarkably free of damage and debris. Yes, there are still small white specks and light scratches and isolated instances of warping and flicker, but nothing that would even remotely qualify as distracting. As you've come to expect from Kino, grain is untouched by DNR and the image is free from edge enhancement or other unnecessary digital alterations. The picture displays a wonderful sense of clarity—fine high definition detail is easily visible in faces and costumes—and the tonal balance is near-perfect, with deep blacks and bright but rarely overblown whites. Of course, the major allure here for silent film fans is the opening red/green Technicolor sequence, which has been given a careful frame-by-frame recalibration by film historian and preservationist Eric Grayson, working from the best materials available.

Seven Chances Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Go-to silent movie composer Robert Israel has cooked up another new score for Seven Chances, and while I wish Kino would've given us some additional (and more vintage) audio options like they have on previous Keaton releases, this track—a ragtime-y patter of piano and drums—suits the film fine. The score is available in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 or Linear PCM 2.0 stereo, and either option works well, with a presentation that's clear and vibrant, if never dynamically boisterous. Even in the 5.1 alignment, the track stays anchored firmly up front, so you're not missing much if you don't have a multi-speaker home theater set-up. There are no subtitle options, of course, but the original intertitles are clean and easy to read.

Seven Chances Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary by Ken Gordon and Bruce Lawton: I hate to say it, but this is one of the driest, most unenlightening commentary tracks I've heard in some time. Sure, there are some interesting bits of trivia, but Gordon and Lawton spend most of the time pointlessly describing what we can plainly see on screen.
• "A Brideless Groom" (1080p, 16:48): Okay, this Three Stooges short—which borrows the basic plot of Seven Chances—more than makes up for the starchy commentary track. A fantastic addition.
• "How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns" (1080p, 9:44): A 1904 Edison Company short that features a prototype of the chase sequence in Seven Chances.
• Tour of Filming Locations (1080p, 10:17): John Bengtson, author of Silent Echoes, gives a detailed description of exactly where Seven Chances was shot, comparing archival images with contemporary photos.
• About the Technicolor Sequence (1080p, 6:15): Film historian Eric Grayson discusses the the process of restoring the opening Technicolor sequence.
• Stills Gallery: A high definition, user-directed gallery with sixteen stills.

Seven Chances Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Kino's Buster Keaton Blu-ray releases over the past two years have been simply phenomenal, and the company's treatment of Seven Chances— one of Keaton's most unjustly undervalued films—is no exception. If you love silent movies, you owe it to yourself to add all of these to your collection. Like the others, Seven Chances looks terrific in high definition, features a newly recorded score, and—minus a snooze-worthy commentary track—comes with some relevant and entertaining extras, including a cracking Three Stooges short. Highly recommended!