Movie titans rarely know when to leave the scene properly. Hitchcock's last film (possibly) should have been PSYCHO or NORTH BY NORTHWEST, rather than FAMILY PLOT. CHAPLIN should have avoided A KING IN NEW YORK and THE COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG (and possibly cut LIMELIGHT to a handful of scenes from the English Music Hall, including the one with his peer Buster Keaton). Welles was able to pull out one great last film, F IS FOR FAKE, but he was still appearing in terrible movies up until his death in 1985. Did John Ford really need to leave with SEVEN WOMEN rather than say TWO RODE TOGETHER or CHEYENNE AUTUMN? Did Preston Sturgis make his film record better by doing THE FRENCH, THEY ARE A FUNNY RACE!
Buster Keaton is a trifle luckier than these, his peers. His nadir as a film artist was at MGM in the early 1930s, and he slowly struggled back. It was his luck that he did find work as a joke writer, and then a supporting comic actor, and occasionally (in foreign films) as a director. Then came his rediscovery in the 1950s, due to James Mason finding many of Keaton's old movies in the mansion Mason was residing at - and handing them to a film archive to be preserved - and to television, which allowed Keaton to still do some of his old physical comedy. It's hard to realize that his appearances on THE TWILIGHT ZONE or on Allan Funt's CANDID CAMERA kept him in the public eye. The sale of his life story for the abominable film THE BUSTER KEATON STORY gave him financial support to the end of his life. If he appeared in too many drecky films like the Annette Funicello "Beach" films, he still did appearances (even if brief) in A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM, IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD, LIMELIGHT, and (in a final spurt of his talent) THE RAILRODDER.
Keaton's last starring part was in this Italian comedy that co-starred the Italian comic team of Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrasso. Not well known outside Italy, they were a very popular comic turn in many films. This is the only one, however, that I had the chance to see them in. Actually they were good, and fairly complemented the elderly Keaton.
Buster's physical humor was somewhat curtailed by 1966, but he was able to get mileage from the sort of complex jokes that he used in his silent films of forty years before. For example, he is using a bathroom at one point that Franco and Ciccio were just repairing (they were forced to). As he tries the sink's hot and cold water taps the water flushes in the toilet. As he tries the toilet's flushometer the shower stall starts pouring water out. As he turns on the water taps in the stall the sink fills up! Does this discourage him? No - he studies the situation and simply figures out how to fill up the sink by turning on the shower stall, etc.
As for Franco and Ciccio they bear their half of the film as well. The plot deals with how Buster (General Von Kassler) is in German hands but the Allies (directed by Fred Clark as General Zacharian) are trying to get their hands on him. Franco and Ciccio are two Italian - American soldiers who are ordered to get the General from the Germans. They make an interesting pair. Franco is rather dubious (it is 1943 - 44) about the Fascist - Italian point of view. Unfortunately he is tied to Ciccio who is pretending to be one Italian that Il Duce would be proud of - a follower of the official lie...err line. No matter how absurd their current situation is in the film, Ciccio openly insists that the Nazis are the key to victory. He keeps lauding them as engineering and mechanical geniuses, even when their new amphibious jeep - boat sinks constantly underneath himself and the more realistic Franco.
Eventually the General realizes the war is lost. Unfortunately the General's discovery leads his "protectors" into deciding they might as well get rid of him. So the General has to be saved by Franco and Ciccio (a series of events that allow Franco to do his imitation of Hitler at one point).
The film is actually an amusing film for Buster to end with - not like THE RAILRODDER perhaps, but one that is worth watching. The conclusion of the film is bittersweet too, given how the coming of sound helped wreck Keaton's star status at MGM. Wisely his part is silent - unlike Wallace Beery in GRAND HOTEL Buster did not essay a "German" accent - and he proves by the mileage of his filmed performance that he did not need dialog. But at the end, when Franco and Ciccio give Buster his freedom they present him with civilian clothes: his old pork-pie hat and an ill-fitting jacket. He quietly removes his uniform and puts these on, turns to them, and (in his well known American flat baritone) says "Thanks!". Then he walks into the sunset, and the film ends. Not a great film by any stretch, but a sweet end for a film legend.
Buster Keaton is a trifle luckier than these, his peers. His nadir as a film artist was at MGM in the early 1930s, and he slowly struggled back. It was his luck that he did find work as a joke writer, and then a supporting comic actor, and occasionally (in foreign films) as a director. Then came his rediscovery in the 1950s, due to James Mason finding many of Keaton's old movies in the mansion Mason was residing at - and handing them to a film archive to be preserved - and to television, which allowed Keaton to still do some of his old physical comedy. It's hard to realize that his appearances on THE TWILIGHT ZONE or on Allan Funt's CANDID CAMERA kept him in the public eye. The sale of his life story for the abominable film THE BUSTER KEATON STORY gave him financial support to the end of his life. If he appeared in too many drecky films like the Annette Funicello "Beach" films, he still did appearances (even if brief) in A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM, IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD, LIMELIGHT, and (in a final spurt of his talent) THE RAILRODDER.
Keaton's last starring part was in this Italian comedy that co-starred the Italian comic team of Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrasso. Not well known outside Italy, they were a very popular comic turn in many films. This is the only one, however, that I had the chance to see them in. Actually they were good, and fairly complemented the elderly Keaton.
Buster's physical humor was somewhat curtailed by 1966, but he was able to get mileage from the sort of complex jokes that he used in his silent films of forty years before. For example, he is using a bathroom at one point that Franco and Ciccio were just repairing (they were forced to). As he tries the sink's hot and cold water taps the water flushes in the toilet. As he tries the toilet's flushometer the shower stall starts pouring water out. As he turns on the water taps in the stall the sink fills up! Does this discourage him? No - he studies the situation and simply figures out how to fill up the sink by turning on the shower stall, etc.
As for Franco and Ciccio they bear their half of the film as well. The plot deals with how Buster (General Von Kassler) is in German hands but the Allies (directed by Fred Clark as General Zacharian) are trying to get their hands on him. Franco and Ciccio are two Italian - American soldiers who are ordered to get the General from the Germans. They make an interesting pair. Franco is rather dubious (it is 1943 - 44) about the Fascist - Italian point of view. Unfortunately he is tied to Ciccio who is pretending to be one Italian that Il Duce would be proud of - a follower of the official lie...err line. No matter how absurd their current situation is in the film, Ciccio openly insists that the Nazis are the key to victory. He keeps lauding them as engineering and mechanical geniuses, even when their new amphibious jeep - boat sinks constantly underneath himself and the more realistic Franco.
Eventually the General realizes the war is lost. Unfortunately the General's discovery leads his "protectors" into deciding they might as well get rid of him. So the General has to be saved by Franco and Ciccio (a series of events that allow Franco to do his imitation of Hitler at one point).
The film is actually an amusing film for Buster to end with - not like THE RAILRODDER perhaps, but one that is worth watching. The conclusion of the film is bittersweet too, given how the coming of sound helped wreck Keaton's star status at MGM. Wisely his part is silent - unlike Wallace Beery in GRAND HOTEL Buster did not essay a "German" accent - and he proves by the mileage of his filmed performance that he did not need dialog. But at the end, when Franco and Ciccio give Buster his freedom they present him with civilian clothes: his old pork-pie hat and an ill-fitting jacket. He quietly removes his uniform and puts these on, turns to them, and (in his well known American flat baritone) says "Thanks!". Then he walks into the sunset, and the film ends. Not a great film by any stretch, but a sweet end for a film legend.