Cops (1922 film)
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Cops
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This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1997.
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Cops is a 1922 American two-reel silent comedy film about a young man (Buster Keaton) who accidentally gets on the bad side of the entire Los Angeles Police Department during a parade and is chased all over town. It was written and directed by Edward F. Cline and Keaton. This very Kafka-esque film was filmed during the rape-and-murder trial of Fatty Arbuckle, a circumstance that may have influenced the short's tone of hopeless ensnarement.
Why It Rocks
- Due to Keaton's strong interest with the camera and the technology of film, his films --including this one-- have an extremely cinematic and “modern” approach that makes them particularly effective decades later, particularly for younger viewers who haven’t formed prejudices toward “old” movies.
- The film begins with the camera framing Keaton behind bars, seemingly in jail, talking to a young woman. A quick cut reveals that he is not in jail, but only at the gate of her father’s mansion, with her rejection of him until he becomes “successful” setting him off on the quest that will comprise the rest of the film. Quite concisely, this composition and editing not only constructs the film’s first surprise and laugh, but it also serves as a metaphor for his character’s confined romantic and economic position. It further serves as a foreshadowing of the film’s unusually dark, yet equally comical conclusion with what is surely one of the most specific and startlingly original title cards ever created.
- Throughout the film this construction continues, taking full advantage of composition, editing, performance, and use of locations and props as only cinema can. There is nothing stage bound about it. Keaton’s characters have a strong moral fiber in all his films, making him much more sympathetic when life continues to thwart his efforts. Here in particular, Keaton carefully builds the audience’s sympathy for his plight by creating inventive ways to show his cleverness and diligence, allowing us to forgive his keeping cash that doesn’t belong to him by setting up the “theft” as revenge against a bad tipper. Additionally, the audience is allowed to reach the same erroneous conclusions as Keaton’s character throughout, even though we have the truth of each situation revealed exclusively to us. (i.e.: the horse and wagon are not being sold as a misplaced sign has led us to believe; the family is moving rather than selling their belongings; the man that Buster relieved of his cash is a cop)
- The film's also noteworthy for Buster Keaton's deadpan expression throughout numerous scenes. Buster Keaton's character remains unrealistically and comically passive. His blank facial expression doesn’t match the extreme events that take place around him that would normally warrant a more extreme response.
- Like a lot of Keaton's films, Keaton performs his own stunts. He was occasionally doubled later in his career, but the jumping, leaping, climbing, back flips, and especially running in Cops is all his work. (In the film’s most dangerous gag, he effects an escape by grabbing onto a passing car, which pulls him by his arm off his feet and out of the frame.)
- The film has a simple premise: girl rejects boy unless he can get a job. From that narrow perspective Keaton builds a world with mysterious class structures and authority figures, one whose physical laws are puzzles to be mastered, one in which his character is flung about by forces beyond his control. He is complicit in his destiny, first stealing a wad of cash from Joe Roberts's wallet, then "buying" a family's furniture from an obvious con man. Should Keaton have given the swaybacked nag he steals goat glands to run faster? Should he have used an anarchist's bomb as a cigarette lighter? Filmgoers can see the consequences of these decisions looming inexorably over him. Part of the delight the film brings comes from the way Keaton releases this tension in the full-out flight that makes up the last four minutes of the film.
- For a short silent comedy film, it contains a lot of social commentary about the time.
- The idea of marriage and love being a concept that is based off of money, image and commodity is something that’s explored through Marxism, and is related to society. Particularly where the unnamed rich girl tells Keaton's character, “I won’t marry you until you become a big business man.”
- Keaton’s character is wrongly accused of being a thief which could be based off of a prejudice that middle class citizens hold about the working class
- A character is shown getting onto an automobile which has a sign in the glass which states ‘Yellow Cab’- presumably a Yellow Cap taxi service is a depiction of a real city organization in 1922 or simply a depiction of urban transportation and industrialization
- The theme of poverty is very prominent within this story; a man is seen pretending to cry in a desperate attempt to con our protagonist into giving him money
- Panning wide shots that track characters’ movement as oppose to motivating the viewer’s emotion through the camera’s movement is an example of Realist direction and cinematography. The camera tracks the movement of the horse and carriage from right to left in the most natural way possible.
The Short (inside the public domain)
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