Seven Chances (1925)

Classic silent comedy in which Buster Keaton must marry a girl before 7:00 pm or forfeit a seven million dollar fortune (remember this is pre-depressions value). During the corse of the film Keaton ends up being chased around town by hundreds of perspective brides in Keystone Cops fashion. This has lead me to develop a theory that scale was a major element of silent comedy, you simply couldn’t do this bit on the stage and it’s a different beast if described in a book, and its less funny now in the era of epic sized everything. The highlight of the film though is when Keaton is chased by countless fake looking boulders. The story goes that a test screening of an early version of the film got some surprise laughs when during a chase scene (of which there are a number in the film) Buster dislodged some rocks that came rolling after him. So thinking that if little rocks got a little laugh, giant rocks should get giant laughs, he added another real to the film of just that. You know what, it was one of only two or three times in the film in which I laughed aloud. The DVD also contains two Buster Keaton shorts. 3 out of 5.