This feature film is in one sense a disorienting experience, since it looks and plays like one of the later Educational short subjects (with its 'innocent caught up in jail break' plot, it reminded me somewhat of "Jail Bait"), while featuring a visibly younger Keaton. In fact, he was apparently still drinking heavily at this point, but there is no sign of this in his performance. I've heard it suggested that if "Le Roi des Champs-Elysees" had only received a US release it might have rehabilitated Keaton's reputation; but having seen it, I have to say I wouldn't have rested too many hopes on that myself.
It's not that the film is especially bad. (Keaton's French dialogue does sound dragging and semi-moronic in places, due I would guess either to laboured phonetic rendition of his lines and/or primitive dubbing techniques.) On the whole it comes across as a pretty low-budget production, with rather arbitrary plot development and lack of characterisation more reminiscent of a short than a full-fledged feature, especially where the two girls are concerned.
A lot of the humour is very broad: some of this (as when Buster's knocks are met by improbable crescendos of blubbering from within the boardroom) I found funny, some of it (yet another 'clumsy Buster disrupts theatrical spectacle' scenario -- twice!) fell flat. The beginning of the film, despite its memorable image, feels totally unconnected with the main plot, save for the slender thread that causes the girl to fall for Buster because he gives her not-really-fake money to pay the rent -- in itself a highly strained contrivance, since a trip into a tenement doesn't belong in his advertising campaign, and he himself believes the notes to be worthless...
On the other hand, cheap script and production values aside, there is actually a good deal to appreciate in the film, and it left me smiling. The scene in which Buster decides to commit suicide is a classic Keaton blend of humour in pathos without sentimentality -- the laughs are in the detail. His rotund, ever-optimistic mother is an entertaining creation (not to mention an unusual one -- Keaton's lonely failures seldom sport supportive relatives!), and in her role as stage prompt, provides an effective finale to the over-long slapstick scenery struggle. The chase at the end is well set up by the earlier scene, in itself entertaining, in which the various trap-doors and entrances are unwittingly demonstrated while Buster tries to escape the attentions of his loyal bodyguard. It's a classic case of double pay-off on the same gag.
But the notorious decision to have the 'Great Stone Face' break into a smile in the film's last few moments actually forms a very sweet and effective sequence that leaves the audience on a laugh. He reacts to the girl's kisses at first with distaste and embarrassment, then with dawning speculation (the mental process written clearly on his face), and finally -- with a lovely curling grin, and murmur (in French!) of "Oh, 'Baby'..." -- gets stuck in with enthusiasm. What appears grotesque in the circulated still, where he is caught with his mouth half-open, is actually infectiously attractive in motion; enough to give rise to the heresy of wishing that he'd done so more often!
The real interest in "Le Roi des Champs-Elysees", however, despite its uneven qualities, lies in Keaton's parallel performance in the role of Jimmy, the American hoodlum. Practically every long-running TV series seems to boast an 'evil twin/clone/double' episode where the heroic leading man can re-assert his claim to be a bona fide actor as well as a heart-throb: this film demonstrates something that hadn't even occurred to me, that -- with his low growl, angular features, iron grip and the jerky, assertive movements we see in rare clips of him as director -- if fate had intervened otherwise, Buster Keaton could have made a career as a perfectly credible villain.
When he is kidnapped as a hapless innocent, the very idea that the leader of the criminals could possibly resemble this diminutive figure in any way appears to be yet another contrivance to be accepted for the sake of the plot. But when Jimmy, whom we have hitherto only glimpsed in snatches, bulls his way back into their headquarters, alert, snarling and palpably dangerous, the concept is suddenly not preposterous at all. It's not simply the way that Keaton demonstrates his ability to differentiate his two characters (although he does, to a degree that made me forget that any screen wizardry was involved in having the two in the story at the same time); it's the sheer perceptual shift of surprise in realising that Buster Keaton isn't actually a hundred miles removed from the pug-like power of a Jimmy Cagney, should he so choose.
I can't honestly recommend this as an unjustly neglected classic: it has the flaws of a low-budget two-reeler without the laugh-a-minute virtues of the compact format. ("Jail Bait", for example, is funnier.) On the other hand, by and large it doesn't drag the way that many of the MGM features do, it doesn't suffer from the same curse of unfunny dialogue (unless I'm simply missing intended nuances in the French), and Keaton himself gives the welcome impression of being engaged and interested by the work.
As comedy, it's patchy but watchable; a small production cashing in on the opportunity to get a big name on the cheap, I'd guess, and a project that apparently didn't pay off for either party in renewed success. However, as a missing piece in Keaton's jigsaw -- both in featuring the 'dark' role and in the one-off use of his smile -- it is definitely fascinating, and not such bad entertainment either. It's not going to rehabilitate any reputations, but I'm glad it has survived.
And incidentally, it also has an infuriatingly catchy theme tune...
It's not that the film is especially bad. (Keaton's French dialogue does sound dragging and semi-moronic in places, due I would guess either to laboured phonetic rendition of his lines and/or primitive dubbing techniques.) On the whole it comes across as a pretty low-budget production, with rather arbitrary plot development and lack of characterisation more reminiscent of a short than a full-fledged feature, especially where the two girls are concerned.
A lot of the humour is very broad: some of this (as when Buster's knocks are met by improbable crescendos of blubbering from within the boardroom) I found funny, some of it (yet another 'clumsy Buster disrupts theatrical spectacle' scenario -- twice!) fell flat. The beginning of the film, despite its memorable image, feels totally unconnected with the main plot, save for the slender thread that causes the girl to fall for Buster because he gives her not-really-fake money to pay the rent -- in itself a highly strained contrivance, since a trip into a tenement doesn't belong in his advertising campaign, and he himself believes the notes to be worthless...
On the other hand, cheap script and production values aside, there is actually a good deal to appreciate in the film, and it left me smiling. The scene in which Buster decides to commit suicide is a classic Keaton blend of humour in pathos without sentimentality -- the laughs are in the detail. His rotund, ever-optimistic mother is an entertaining creation (not to mention an unusual one -- Keaton's lonely failures seldom sport supportive relatives!), and in her role as stage prompt, provides an effective finale to the over-long slapstick scenery struggle. The chase at the end is well set up by the earlier scene, in itself entertaining, in which the various trap-doors and entrances are unwittingly demonstrated while Buster tries to escape the attentions of his loyal bodyguard. It's a classic case of double pay-off on the same gag.
But the notorious decision to have the 'Great Stone Face' break into a smile in the film's last few moments actually forms a very sweet and effective sequence that leaves the audience on a laugh. He reacts to the girl's kisses at first with distaste and embarrassment, then with dawning speculation (the mental process written clearly on his face), and finally -- with a lovely curling grin, and murmur (in French!) of "Oh, 'Baby'..." -- gets stuck in with enthusiasm. What appears grotesque in the circulated still, where he is caught with his mouth half-open, is actually infectiously attractive in motion; enough to give rise to the heresy of wishing that he'd done so more often!
The real interest in "Le Roi des Champs-Elysees", however, despite its uneven qualities, lies in Keaton's parallel performance in the role of Jimmy, the American hoodlum. Practically every long-running TV series seems to boast an 'evil twin/clone/double' episode where the heroic leading man can re-assert his claim to be a bona fide actor as well as a heart-throb: this film demonstrates something that hadn't even occurred to me, that -- with his low growl, angular features, iron grip and the jerky, assertive movements we see in rare clips of him as director -- if fate had intervened otherwise, Buster Keaton could have made a career as a perfectly credible villain.
When he is kidnapped as a hapless innocent, the very idea that the leader of the criminals could possibly resemble this diminutive figure in any way appears to be yet another contrivance to be accepted for the sake of the plot. But when Jimmy, whom we have hitherto only glimpsed in snatches, bulls his way back into their headquarters, alert, snarling and palpably dangerous, the concept is suddenly not preposterous at all. It's not simply the way that Keaton demonstrates his ability to differentiate his two characters (although he does, to a degree that made me forget that any screen wizardry was involved in having the two in the story at the same time); it's the sheer perceptual shift of surprise in realising that Buster Keaton isn't actually a hundred miles removed from the pug-like power of a Jimmy Cagney, should he so choose.
I can't honestly recommend this as an unjustly neglected classic: it has the flaws of a low-budget two-reeler without the laugh-a-minute virtues of the compact format. ("Jail Bait", for example, is funnier.) On the other hand, by and large it doesn't drag the way that many of the MGM features do, it doesn't suffer from the same curse of unfunny dialogue (unless I'm simply missing intended nuances in the French), and Keaton himself gives the welcome impression of being engaged and interested by the work.
As comedy, it's patchy but watchable; a small production cashing in on the opportunity to get a big name on the cheap, I'd guess, and a project that apparently didn't pay off for either party in renewed success. However, as a missing piece in Keaton's jigsaw -- both in featuring the 'dark' role and in the one-off use of his smile -- it is definitely fascinating, and not such bad entertainment either. It's not going to rehabilitate any reputations, but I'm glad it has survived.
And incidentally, it also has an infuriatingly catchy theme tune...
