Film Forum

U.S., 1923
Directed by Buster Keaton and John G. Blystone
Starring Buster Keaton, Natalie Talmadge, Joe Keaton, Buster Keaton Jr.
DCP. Approx. 65 min.

In 1831, elegant New Yorker Buster travels to Virginia via primitive railroad to claim an inheritance, then plunges into the “Canfield-Mackay” feud. A marvelous evocation of pre-Civil War America, and a family affair (father Joe as trainman, Buster Jr. as prologue infant, and wife Natalie as love interest) that includes “a profusion of brilliant, indescribable visual gags.” David Shipman. Restored by Lobster Films. 

Reviews

“Buster Keaton’s ingenuity, acrobatics, and romanticism flourish equally in this antic twist on melodrama. It’s set mainly in 1830 and is loosely based on the historical Hatfield-McCoy feud; Keaton stars as the twenty-one-year-old Willie McKay, who has been raised in New York to keep him ignorant of his family’s feud. When Willie travels to his ancestral home in rural Kentucky to claim an inheritance, the trip proves eventful: while enduring the exaggeratedly loopy rigors of early rail travel, he begins a shy romance with a young woman (Natalie Talmadge) who’s seated beside him—a member of the rival Canfield family, whose menfolk, learning of his arrival, set out to kill him. Willie’s efforts to elude his pursuers give rise to Keaton’s nimble and mercurial capers. The directorial artistry features riotous disguises and sly stagecraft, and the climactic chase, with its gallant heroics, leads to a waterfall, where Keaton performs one of the most terrifying, precisely timed stunts ever filmed.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“With this work, Keaton began to display a dramatic sense to complement his comic sensibility—like The General, it is built with the integrity of a high-adventure story. Of course, Keaton still finds room for his inimitable sight gags and beloved gadgets, here including an early steam locomotive that pulls its carriage train up and down the hills of Pennsylvania with a lovely reptilian grace.”
– Dave Kehr

“Keaton’s second feature and first full-length masterpiece, a story about the innocent inheritor of an old feud between Southern families, who carelessly starts dating the girl from the other family. The period setting (1831, the early days of rail travel) is made integral to the action, and all the laughs spring directly from the narrative and the characters. Buster's climactic rescue of his sweetheart from a waterfall is one of his most daringly acrobatic (and most celebrated) gags.”
– Tony Rayns, Time Out