1921, Dir Buster Keaton, Edward Cline, B&W silent, 27 mins
At 27 minutes this is a very short filmt but don’t see that as a setback. It’s a hilarious story about how not to launch a boat, and then what not to do at sea.
In the film Buster in his boater builds a boat in his garage and destroys his house as he tows it to the dock to go cruising. The boat is called Damfino and you can imagine Buster acquiring the name after being asked what she was called by each and every visitor to the Balboa Island, Newport Beach, California set. It’s also, if you lip-read, the last line in the film!
As a note of trivia Buster Keaton fanclub members call themselves the Damfinos… (busterkeaton.org)
Two boats were made for the film by Buster’s technical guy Fred Gabourie, who managed to make the boat of the launching scene sink by attaching it to rails and pulling it underwater with cables.
With his wife, played with unerring trust by Sybil Seely (who tries to launch the boat with a bottle of coke), Buster embarks on a weekend afloat, en famille, which is supposed to be a safe and happy cruise, but in which he manages to completely destroy… just about everything. With stunts from him being knocked overboard by his patent mast-lowering system – for shooting bridges, to studio footage of the boat being rolled and finally some dark scenes of a captain going down with his ship (until he surfaces under his hat) this is both an hilarious and at times salutary film with moments that can still make you laugh out loud on the umpteenth viewing.
Buster plays the whole film with his stock-in-trade stoneface, which gives the piece a wonderfully forlorn air while his wife and their two young sons, who are not credited, form an uncomplaining cast. Apparently James Mason, another great actor of sea films, found this film when he bought Buster’s house in the 1950s – saving the old print for posterity and current digital versions are quite clean. DH
This classic film is available online in a colourised version:
Reviewed as part of our Great Sailing Films Collection