TRIBUTES AND RETROSPECTIVES

Sport and cinema

The High Sign

Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton
1921 - United States - 20mn

Screenings : monday 22 - 10:00 am - Centre de congrès - Auditorium - presented by Guy-Baptiste Jaccottand - organiste

A man looking for a job is hired at a shooting range. But the range is just a front for a gang of assassins. When he is hired to protect the father of a charming young girl, and at the same time by the assassins to kill him, our hero is faced with a major problem.

In January 1920 Keaton opened his own independent studio with only a month to spare before a role he had signed up for at Metro. He set production in motion on this short but, strangely enough, still considered it a failure and shelved it for over a year, only to release it in April 1921, after six other shorts had established his status as a major star. Keaton's dislike of the film was perhaps partly due to the fact that it departed from his usual conception of the moral basis of his comic character: “Charlie's tramp was a vagabond with a vagabond's philosophy. As nice as he was, he stole when he could. My character was a hard-working, honest guy. But the hero of this short film is, unusually, a bit of a thief. The first time he appears on screen, he's seen stealing a newspaper; then he replaces a policeman's gun with a banana; and then he tinkers with an ingenious machine to fool people into thinking he's a great shot”.

CAST AND CREW

Cast : Buster Keaton, Al St. John
Screenplay : Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton
Cinematography : Elgin Lessley

Production : Joseph M. Schenck Productions

French distributor : Lobster Films