USA/Comedy/Silent/B&W
Directed & Written by:
Edward F. Cline & Buster Keaton
Cast:
Buster Keaton
Sybil Seely
Joe Roberts
A newly wedded couple attempts to build a house with a prefabricated kit, unaware that a rival sabotaged the kit's component numbering.
One Week is the first film to be released made by Keaton on his own, although he had worked with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle for a number of years. The High Sign(1921) had been filmed prior to One Week, but Keaton considered it an inferior effort to debut with, and released it the following year when he was convalescing from a broken ankle he suffered during the filming of The Electric House (1922). One Week is also the first movie to shoot while the camera is revolving a full 360 degrees.
The film was inspired by a Ford Motor Company documentary, Home Made (1919), an educational short about prefabricated housing. Keaton saw the film and decided to parody it. One Week has many of the devices used in Home Made, including the wedding, the Model T and the use of the pages from a daily calendar to show the house being built in one week.
Many special effects, such as the house spinning around during a storm and the train collision, were filmed as they occurred and were not model work. The house was built on a turntable, so it would be able to spin during the violent rainstorm scene.
The fall Keaton takes when he steps out of the bathroom and falls two stories down, is one of the few occasions he truly hurt himself making films. The impact of the fall made his arms and back swell, and his physical trainer, Al Gilmore had to put him in hot and cold showers and then apply olive oil and later horse liniment to eventually get the swelling down.
Sybil Seely was 18 years old when she appeared in One Week. She went on to star in 18 films, the last of which was in 1922. After two more appearances in Buster Keaton's shorts, Sybil Seely was replaced as leading lady by Virginia Fox. However, Buster asked her back for The Boat (1921) with the idea of combining it with this film into a four reel-feature, but it never came to pass. Sybil died in 1984.
On its release, the New York Times movie review said, "One Week, a Buster Keaton work, has more fun in it than most slap-stick, trick-property comedies."
Nearly a hundred years later, the film has been referred to as a 'gateway drug to silent cinema', and remains a delight for people of all ages.
This copy has the best Soundtrack
This copy has the best video
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