Featuring purportedly one of the most accurate re-creations of the antebellum South, Buster Keaton's second feature prefigures The General in its prominent use of an early wood-burning locomotive as both stunt-apparatus and homage to the past. The "Rocket's" trek from New York to Trenton occupies nearly two reels and stands as one of Keaton's towering achievements. The train suffers animal obstructions, uneven tracks, resourceful hobos, and design flaws while its passengers are jostled about, their faces smudged by the fumes. Everywhere on the journey, onlookers gather to watch this strange contraption. One of Keaton's best visual gags is a long shot of farmhands scurrying towards the foreground to watch the train pass. The subject is kept out of view for a good thirty seconds until it rushes in from off-screen, its two-car caboose shambling past the observers who plainly return to their jobs following this all-too-brief spectacle. Keaton is clearly fascinated with documenting reactions to progress: in one scene, he sits on his hobbyhorse waiting at a crosswalk as an old guard relates the dangers of horse-drawn carriages.
Mostly though, as in all Keaton films, his precise sense of visual humor is the true subject, an ingenious succession of absurd predicaments, obscured compositional elements, and infinite off-screen space that seems to lurk just beyond camera, permanently ready to throw another obstacle in the hero's path. Take the fishing scene, for example: Keaton, on the run from a rival family, grabs a pole and attempts to blend in with the landscape. Cut to two farmers, who blow up a nearby dam to irrigate their crops. Keaton, seated beneath the spot of runoff but fortunately set in from the ledge, is blocked by the waterfall just as the brothers emerge in frame, looking in his direction. Or the chase down a mountainside, as Keaton ties himself to a rope that suddenly drops into view, unaware that his pursuer is attached to the other end. His comic gift lies in creating humor through disjunction, in this case between what we can see and what his protagonist cannota very sophisticated punch line that would likely be lost without his exact incorporation of camera placement, staging, set design, and editing. The thrilling, climactic waterfall rescue is Keaton's greatest coup, with a bit of physical timing that must be seen to be believed. For the attentive viewer, Keaton's movies never stop giving, seeming to transcend physical boundaries right before our eyes.
Mostly though, as in all Keaton films, his precise sense of visual humor is the true subject, an ingenious succession of absurd predicaments, obscured compositional elements, and infinite off-screen space that seems to lurk just beyond camera, permanently ready to throw another obstacle in the hero's path. Take the fishing scene, for example: Keaton, on the run from a rival family, grabs a pole and attempts to blend in with the landscape. Cut to two farmers, who blow up a nearby dam to irrigate their crops. Keaton, seated beneath the spot of runoff but fortunately set in from the ledge, is blocked by the waterfall just as the brothers emerge in frame, looking in his direction. Or the chase down a mountainside, as Keaton ties himself to a rope that suddenly drops into view, unaware that his pursuer is attached to the other end. His comic gift lies in creating humor through disjunction, in this case between what we can see and what his protagonist cannota very sophisticated punch line that would likely be lost without his exact incorporation of camera placement, staging, set design, and editing. The thrilling, climactic waterfall rescue is Keaton's greatest coup, with a bit of physical timing that must be seen to be believed. For the attentive viewer, Keaton's movies never stop giving, seeming to transcend physical boundaries right before our eyes.
