The Navigator

Buster's Maritime 3
THE NAVIGATOR (1924): One of Buster's best features. A fast-paced fun collection of classic gags, Buster filmed on top of "The Buford", a ship that was actually used by the U.S. govt. to dump alleged Bolsheviks out of the USA and into Russia in 1919. The film begins with Buster proposing marriage to his gal, who turns him down. The two mistakenly wind up on the ship, called The Navigator, which happens to be deserted and floundering at sea. They make do the best they can, and eventually must deal with cannibals on a tropical island. One of the funniest Buster gags I've ever seen is in this movie - while he's trying to go to sleep in his cabin, his gal throws a snarly-looking portrait of a swabo out of her cabin and it lands on a nail outside the porthole window of Buster's cabin. It swings from side-to-side, giving Buster the illusion that The Navigator is haunted. More haunted-ship gags follow (spook gags show up in other Buster films), which makes me wonder if...

Beautiful transfer of a great film!
Many silent films have lived past their copyright expiration and are now in public domain. This allows any hack with enough will to put out old films on DVD and charge what the market will pay. Fortunately, Kino International has provided us some excellent transfers of the Buster Keaton film library to enjoy.

'The Navigator' is a film that uses a large ship as it main prop. Keaton plays the naive son of a wealthy family who wrongly gets on a ship that is about to be destroyed, He spends the rest of the movie barely dodging disaster after disaster while keeping his famous dead-pan facial expression. 'The Navigator' also includes some of the earliest underwater movie photography.

Included with this DVD are 2 extra 20 minute films: 'The Boat' and 'The Love Nest'. Both are excellent transfers and fun to watch. The DVD also has a theme, since all included movies have to do with sailing and the ocean.

The musical scores are excellent and compliment the movie very well.

If...

How funny can one movie be?
No other movie I've ever seen - with the possible exceptoin of the first Richard Pryor concert film, which isn't quite the same thing - has ever made me laugh as much, or as hard, as this. That the gags are peerlessly set up and flawlessly executed is to be expected with Keaton, and he made better films than this ("The General" comes to mind, of course) but for sheer, painful belly-laughs, none of Buster's work, for me, comes close. A few moments of many: Buster's idiot girlfriend making coffee; their eerily hilarious meeting on the drifting boat, so perfectly timed and played it should a) serve as a model for all physical comedians and b) never be done again; and Keaton's underwater duel with a swordfish. Just don't watch it while you're eating, and keep a pillow by the couch for falling on.

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