Buster Keaton in THE HIGH SIGN (1920)

Kino's new "Ultimate 3-Disc Edition" of Buster Keaton's silent short subjects starts appropriately enough with the first one he made as a star after inheriting Fatty Arbuckle's spot on the Joseph M. Schenck roster when Arbuckle graduated to feature films. According to the supplemental materials, Keaton shelved The High Sign because he didn't consider it enough of an announcement of his individual style, and released it only when an injury made it necessary in order to meet his contractual obligations. It's not a bad little film at all, and it's not really any more primitive or Arbuckle-esque than some of his other early shorts. But you can see why Keaton thought he could do better.

Buster lands on screen after being thrown from a speeding train into "somewhere," having come from "nowhere," as an opening title informs us. He strolls over to a nearby merry-go-round and snatches a newspaper from under a passing rider's arm. It's a strangely defective newspaper; all the pages seem to be attached, and the edition threatens to engulf Buster as he unfolds it. There's no good reason for a newspaper to be this way, but near the end of his life Keaton would figure out a better device for the gag: a map in the Canadian travelogue The Railroader. In any event, he finds the classifieds and sees a want-ad for a target shooter for a local shooting gallery. He resolves to get the job, but not before the carousel rider, having lost his paper, accosts him and pays him for the same copy, not realizing that it's his.

There's a guileless ruthlessness to early Buster that's reminiscent of Arbuckle and is best displayed here when he decides he needs to practice before applying for the job. To do that, he needs a gun. He gets one by snatching it out of a policeman's holster, replacing it with a banana. He takes target practice with absurd results. In some of the simplest sight gags, he points his gun at one bottle, and the bottle to its left or right explodes -- or, firing straight ahead at a bottle, he'll hit a heckling Al St. John, a fellow Arbuckle alumnus, right in the ass. Buster needs little practice before applying, and he works out a way to impress "Tiny Tim," the giant boss of the shooting gallery, by contriving one of Keaton's characteristic contraptions. Whenever he fires at a target, his mechanism sets a dog after food outside. The dog's action rings a bell, convincing Tiny Tim, who is only listening, not watching, that Buster's a crack shot.

Tiny Tim leads a double life. He secretly leads the Blinking Buzzards, a Black Hand-like extortion gang, and Buster's apparent prowess with firearms makes him an ideal assassin. He is sworn into the gang and given his first assignment: to kill the wealthy August Pennypincher should the magnate fail to pay the money demanded by September 1. "The first of September will be the end of August," the Buzzards warn in their extortion letter -- one of several bits of verbal humor that seem uncharacteristic of Keaton. But there's a problem with the scheme: Pennypincher and his pretty daughter had earlier visited the shooting gallery and, equally impressed or duped, the great man had hired Buster as his bodyguard. But if he doesn't kill Pennypincher, the Buzzards will kill him....

The High Sign reminds me of the melodramatic underworld thrillers Lon Chaney Sr. was making at the same time, and given Keaton's parodic inclinations, he may have envisioned the film as an outright genre parody. There's definitely a self-conscious quality to the short, most obviously seen in what may be its best known shot. Tiny Tim has encountered the cop Buster robbed earlier, who is embarrassed upon encountering the menace to pull a banana out of his holster. Tim snatches it, scares the cop away, and eats the banana, letting the peel drop to the sidewalk like the slob he is. Here comes Buster around a corner. You know what must happen -- except it doesn't. Our hero walks right past the peel and gives the titular high sign -- the crossed hands in front of the nose, fingers flapping like wings -- right at the camera and the audience. It's an announcement that his aren't going to be your normal predictable two-reelers.

At the same time, it may have struck Keaton as too unreal of a gesture, too absurd like some of this film's sight gags, to be entirely satisfactory. But there are scenes here that are already echt Keaton, especially his chase scene through the two stories and four rooms of a cutaway house full of trapdoors and secret passages. It's the first hint of Keaton's particular sense of spectacle that would find expensive expression in his later features. But overall, Keaton was probably right to believe that he hadn't yet found his distinctive tone or attitude. Still, his rookie effort compares favorably with many a contemporary short from more seasoned performers, and we can be patient with it today knowing that there are masterpieces to come.

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This review will most likely inaugurate a series on the Keaton silent shorts. They shouldn't take long to write and will help me maintain my schedule when I find myself dithering over which features I should review. Also, Keaton is probably still my favorite silent comedian and I look forward to retracing his steps as he ascends to mastery. Not to give anything away, but we won't have long to wait.