One Week (Buster Keaton, 1920)
One week follows a newly wed couple who receive a flat-packed house and a small plot of land. They begin working on the house, but it quickly goes wrong. Everything is, well, higgledy-piggledy. The windows are wonky, the sink is outside, the room is on the wrong way. It’s not going well. The couple’s next idea is to bring a piano in, which they do using a pulley connected to the chandelier. For whatever reason, their ceiling is made of rubber, and they accidentally ping a man through the roof. Later in the week they have a housewarming party, but the house is caught by the wind and begins spinning like a merry-go-round. Then a man comes and tells them they’re on the wrong plot. They turn the house into a car and drag it across to the new plot, but it ends up being hit by a train. They decide to cut their losses at this point, putting the house up for sale and walking off into the sunset.
The film largely belongs to the comedy genre, with a particular focus on physical comedy. This typically involves some kind of physical harm to a person or object. For example, the wall flipping with the man and his wife on either end, the house spinning around, and the bottom part of the car driving off without the top. This sort of thing was extremely common during the 1920’s, with Buster Keaton’s films being the most notable example.
While the film is only a 20 minute short about a funny man with a funny house, it does display some auteur qualities, some things that make it a uniquely ‘Buster Keaton’ film. For example, the film features his signature style of physical comedy, mechanical devices such as the spinning house, and musical personification that punctuates the action as it happens.
Much like most of Buster Keaton’s works, the aim is to pursue the gag at any cost. There isn’t some complex subtext to be interpreted, it’s just supposed to be funny. The man built his house a bit silly and then it got broken.One Week is very representative of the early days of Hollywood cinema as it’s main goal is to be funny, and to make MONEY.
The film acts as a comedic spoof of what would be a very typical family life in the 1920’s. A young couple getting married, getting a car, buying a new house (and possibly building it), having a housewarming party, and (eventually) having children. While the film doesn’t very deeply analyse this lifestyle, it still acts as a snapshot of what things were like.
One way Keaton creates comedy throughout the film is by creating situations that are so contradictory to the way things work in the real world that they’re comedic. For example, having the couple ‘misread’ the instructions so badly that they make an entirely wonky house, having one of the floors be made of rubber, and having the entire house spin around because of gets windy. The other way is through physical comedy such as doing the splits between two cars, running into a wall, and falling out of the window.
I don’t think One Week was a masterpiece, nor do I find myself desperate to see it again, but it was fun. It’s nice to see what used to be the peak of cinematic comedy, and how simple it seems from a more modern perspective. It was silly, and I liked it.
3.5/5