THE ELECTRIC HOUSE
The Electric House
(Buster Keaton Productions Inc., USA, 1922)
dir., script: Buster Keaton, Edward F. Cline; photog.: Elgin Lessley
cast: Buster Keaton (Buster), Joe Roberts (Homeowner), Virginia Fox (Homeowner’s daughter), Joe Keaton, Louise Keaton, Myra Keaton
DCP, 23’; bw; intertitles: EN, subtitles: PL; restored 2015; source: Lobster Films
A mix-up during a university graduation ceremony sees Buster Keaton being accidentally taken for an electrical engineer. He undertakes work in the dean’s villa to automate various home appliances, but these inventions soon turn against their creator.
During the original shooting of the film, Keaton suffered an accident on the moving staircase and had to take a break from work for a year. The man charged with creating the automated technical devices on the movie was Fred Gabourie, who Keaton had cooperated with on The Boat (1921) and One Week, and it’s his ingenious inventions that help to drive the plot. In The Electric House, the final film in Keaton’s trilogy on automation which also included The Scarecrow (1920) and The Haunted House (1921), order and planning are displaced by chaos as it becomes apparent that these electric devices cannot easily be tamed.
introduction to the movie: Iga Harasimowicz
section: TRAVELS BIG AND SMALL
music by: Albert Karch
SATURDAY | OCTOBER 23
15:00 | screening room: MAŁA CZARNA
presented with: One Week
-
THE ELECTRIC HOUSE, source: Lobster Films
-
THE ELECTRIC HOUSE, source: Lobster Films