The High Sign (1921)
Directors: Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton
Writers: Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton
Cinematography: Elgin Lessley
Stars: Buster Keaton, Bartine Burkett, Charles Dorety
Buster plays a drifter who cons his way into working at an amusement park shooting gallery. Believing Buster is an expert marksman, both the murderous gang the Blinking Buzzards and the man they want to kill end up hiring him. The film ends with a wild chase through a house filled with secret passages.
The opening prologue of The High Sign states, "Our hero came from Nowhere--he wasn't going Anywhere and got kicked off Somewhere." Many years later when Roger Ebert reviewed The General, he would say, "(Keaton) seems like a modern visitor to the world of silent clowns."
This was Buster Keaton's first independent two-reeler, but he didn't consider it funny enough and had it shelved upon its completion in 1920. It wasn't released until the following year when his film output was slowed by a broken ankle he suffered in a mishap whilst filming The Electric House (1922).
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