Go West [HD]

Three of His Best
GO WEST (1925): In Go West, Keaton cast an unusually thick role to his leading lady. She's actually the plot. She's a cow. The plot centers around Keaton becoming emotionally attached to her and desperately trying to save her from the slaughterhouse. The beginning of this movie was filmed on a ranch in Arizona, and later in Los Angeles, so we get to see some good authentic 1920s location shots. One of the things that's sort of missing from Go West is Keaton's avalanche of whirleygigs, spin-arounds, and flipflops that pepper his other films (especially the early one's with Arbuckle), but since he's centering the plot on sympathy this time, the slapstick is kept to a minimum. Don't worry, Keaton fans, the sympathy isn't as shmarmy as Chaplin's. This film is charming and it's understandable why it was a hit for MGM. One of the things I discovered about Go West was that, earlier in the day of the first time I viewed it, I happened to have been reading some of Keaton's...

A change of pace for Buster
Buster Keaton didn't usually try for sentiment or audience sympathy in his great films, but GO WEST is an exception. Keaton plays a Chaplinesque loner, aptly named Friendless, who finds work on a ranch and (eventually) a friend: a cow named Brown Eyes. While Buster is as convincing in the film's sentimental moments as he is in the comic ones, there is method to his madness: he is parodying elements of D.W. Griffith's melodramas. A hilarious sequence with Buster attempting to lead a herd of cattle through downtown Los Angeles caps the film beautifully. This tape includes two very funny shorts: THE SCARECROW, and THE PALEFACE (which almost seems like a parody of DANCES WITH WOLVES, seventy years in advance!).

Go West, Young Man, Go West!
GO WEST provides cinema with one of its most surreal moments ever: Buster Keaton, dressed as Satan, riding a cow through the streets of downtown Los Angeles, being pursued by a large herd of angry cattle. I thought I'd mention that right up front, so that people know what they're getting in to.

This is a rather sweet film. The driving force behind it is the relationship formed between Buster Keaton's character and a cow named Brown Eyes. Keaton removes a troublesome pebble from Brown Eye's foot, and Brown Eyes saves Keaton from being trampled by a bull. They become firm friends afterwards. Yes, I know that this sounds like something out of a nauseating children's movie, but the whole thing is obviously played for laughs. While it's silly, it never becomes overbearingly so.

After a quick criss-cross dash around the country, Keaton eventually ends up in the Wild West. Dressed as a cowboy (although he forgoes the usual cowboy hat in favor of his trusty porkpie), he quickly...

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