Three Ages

Starring:Wallace Beery, Lionel Belmore, Louise Emmons, Lillian Lawrence, Margaret Leahy, Kewpie Morgan, Blanche Payson, Joe Roberts
Director: Edward F. Cline
Studio: Image Entertainment
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
Buster Keaton's feature debut as a director (he shared credit with gagman and longtime collaborator Eddie Kline) spoofs, among other things, D.W. Griffith's Intolerance with a look at the trials of true love through the ages. Buster plays a hapless suitor in three different epochs: a bearskin-wearing, dinosaur-riding caveman in the Stone Age; a meek centurion with a ragtag chariot in ancient Rome; and a jazz age Romeo in Model T and black tie. In each time period, he vies for the object of his affections with burly, barrel-chested Wallace Beery, matching Beery's brawn and underhanded dirty tricks with sheer energy and ingenuity. The diminutive deadpan comic is hilarious under a shaggy fright wig and cartoon club as a thoroughly modern caveman, a dwarf among giants at the mercy of romantic Darwinism, but the more inventive sequences belong to the later ages. The rousing chariot race of the Roman segment is topped by a gymnastic chase through dungeons and throne rooms, and the modern section is capped by a mad flight from the police while he rushes to rescue his girl. Three Ages lacks the dramatic unity and sustained creativity of his later masterpieces, but the inventive gas and clever crosscutting turns what could be three individual shorts into an interactive live-action cartoon. Also included are "The Goat," a frantic "mistaken identity" knockabout comedy, and "My Wife's Relations," in which Buster finds himself accidentally married into a family of bullying Irish Catholics. --Sean Axmaker
Description
A brilliant historical satire teeming with inventive flourishes, Buster Keaton's "Three Ages" (1923, 63 min.) is a silent comedy of truly epic proportions. This clever parody of D.W. Griffith's "Intolerance" follows Buster's hard-luck romantic misadventures throughout world history: from the dawn of man in the Stone Age through the gladiator arenas of Ancient Rome to the city streets of the American Jazz Era. Accompanying "Three Ages" on this DVD are two rarely seen short works: "The Goat" (1921, 25 min.), with Buster mistaken for nefarious gunslinger Dead Eye Dan and caught up in a prolonged slapstick-filled chase, and "My Wife's Relations" (1922, 25 min.), a comedy of domestic turmoil that seems to reflect some of the tensions between Keaton and the Talmadges, his real-life in-laws at the time.

The Art of Buster Keaton (The General / Sherlock, Jr. / Our Hospitality / The Navigator / Steamboat Bill Jr. / College / Three Ages / Battling Butler / Go West / The Saphead / Seven Chances / 21 Short Films)
Average customer rating:

Genius

Buying Asian versions

In Buster Keaton's memory!

Reeeealy close, but not quite a cigar

Contents of the set

The Art of Buster Keaton (The General / Sherlock, Jr. / Our Hospitality / The Navigator / Steamboat Bill Jr. / College / Three Ages / Battling Butler / Go West / The Saphead / Seven Chances / 21 Short Films)
Starring: Buster Keaton
Manufacturer: Kino Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Classics | Genres | DVD | Video
General | Silent Films | Classics | Genres | DVD | Video
General | Comedy | Genres | DVD | Video
( A ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
Comedy | Boxed Sets | Stores | DVD | Video
Used DVDs | Stores | DVD | Video | Action & Adventure | African American Cinema | Animation | Anime & Manga | Art House & International | Classics | Comedy | Cult Movies | Documentary | Drama | Educational | Fitness & Yoga | Gay & Lesbian | Horror | Kids & Family | Military & War | Music Video & Concerts | Musicals & Performing Arts | Mystery & Suspense | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Special Interests | Sports | Television | Westerns
Similar Items:

The Chaplin Collection, Vol. 2 (City Lights / The Circus / The Kid / A King in New York / A Woman of Paris / Monsieur Verdoux / The Chaplin Revue / Charlie - The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin)

The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection Vols. 1-3

Buster Keaton Collection (The Cameraman / Spite Marriage / Free & Easy)

The Chaplin Collection, Vol. 1 (Modern Times / The Great Dictator / The Gold Rush / Limelight)

Buster Keaton - 65th Anniversary Collection (General Nuisance / His Ex Marks the Spot / Mooching Through Georgia / Nothing but Pleasure / Pardon My Berth Marks / Pest From the West / So You Won't Squawk / The Spook Speaks / The Taming of the Snood / She's Oil Mine)

ASIN: B00005QW5A
Release Date: 2001-11-20

Amazon.com

Buster Keaton was arguably the cinema's first modernist, an old-fashioned romantic with a 20th-century mind behind a deadpan visage. His films brim with some of the most breathtaking stunts and ingenious gags ever put on film, all perfectly engineered to look effortless. And, as Kino's magnificent 11-disc boxed set The Art of Buster Keaton conclusively shows, they are among the funniest ever made. Keaton warped gags until they left the plane of reality in such shorts as The Playhouse (1921) and The Frozen North (1922), and takes a logic-defying leap into the very nature of cinema itself in his hilarious Sherlock Jr. (1924). He takes on the mechanical world with Rube Golberg ingenuity in The Navigator (1924) and perfects his match between man and massive machine in Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928), which features the funniest hurricane scene ever put to film, and The General (1927), one of the greatest comedies of all time.

In addition to the previously released 11 features and 19 shorts from the peak of Keaton's career, this set boasts the exclusive Keaton Plus, a collection of rarities and tributes. The greatest find is the long-lost ending to Hard Luck (1921), now restored to complete the film's final inspired gag. Other highlights include newly discovered scenes from Daydreams (1922) and The Love Nest (1923), entertaining excerpts from Keaton's 1951 TV show Life with Buster Keaton (he's still got it!), and his rare dramatic turn in the 1954 television play The Awakening. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews:

Genius.......2007-05-18

SO glad I spent literally half a paycheck on this collection . Keaton was , quite simply , brilliant . His amazing stunts and incredible agility put so many present-day actors to shame . As for that signature "stone face"....The man could say so much more with his eyes than any spoken words could ever express . Truly unsurpassed talent .

Buying Asian versions.......2007-01-10

I know spending $100 seems expensive when you can buy an Asian copy on eBay for $30 or $40. But when you do that, nothing is going to David Shepard to compensate him for acquiring these films, transfering them to video, doing some restoration, and adding a sound track. Even if these films are in the public domain, they don't save themselves. It takes time and money to do that. Please help preserve our rapidly disintegrating silent film heritage and buy the DVDs produced by the people doing the work of preservation.

In Buster Keaton's memory!.......2006-11-02

Buster Keaton still remains among the most reduced and even exigent list of the greatest exponents of the comedy genre.

It has been a common place to establsih the comparison between his craft and Charlot, and in this particular if I was inquired, I would say the main virtue of Keaton's grandess and obviously his personal landmark, is the kaleidoscopic vision he always around the characters and situations; while Charlot turned around the sentiments and the hope for a new and promising future, Keaton showed a demolishing narrative speech, hovered by a corrosive humor, deeply human but extremely devastating.

On the other hand, the resource economy and the emblematic expression of his facial grimace was another engaging tool to captivate the audiences.

I admire both of them and consider they represent the two sides of the same coin. Humanity above any other artistic considerations or sharp differences, was in last instance, the common denominator around these two genius of the intelligent humor.

A must for the hard collectors.

Reeeealy close, but not quite a cigar.......2005-11-03

First off, Keaton is one of the great artists of all times, and it's a joy to have such a complete collection of his silent work. (His last few silents, The Cameraman and Spite Marriage, and his sound films are a far cry from Keaton's best, and I suggest leaving them alone unless you're the absolute completist.) Kino has done a superb job on the features, restoring them to the best they've looked in decades and adding funny, unobtrusive musical scores. A perfect 5 here.

So what's not to like? I am saddened by the treatment of the shorts on these discs. They have *not* been restored, and my impression is that they were taken from 16mm prints with wildly variable (and often quite poor) soundtracks. Keaton's shorts are every bit as wonderful and fascinating as his features, and for Kino to foist these second-rate prints off on us makes me sad.

If I could, I'd give 4.5 stars for this collection. Be prepared for a bit of a disappointment when running the shorts.

Contents of the set.......2005-09-25

Before anything else, I agree with those who say that Keaton's shorts are all good; but I strongly disagree with those who say that they are better than his better features. What usually happens with comedy is that people sit down before the screen and just say: OK, make me laugh. Keaton's features are funny -but they are also, and more important, beautifully shot, superbly acted and perfectly structured -which is something only the best actors/directors can put all together. There are no cheap sets like in most movies of the 20's. Keaton's characters move in the real world, with real things, and that's part of what makes them lasting and unique.

In your shelves, Keaton shouldn't share his place with the Marx Brothers, but with Orson Welles (who called The General the best movie ever made about the Civil War) and Martin Scorsese (who said he watched over and over the final fight in Battling Butter -which, by the way, is not supposed to make you laugh, but to surprise you with it's realism)

Now, this are the complete contents of this DVD set. Aside from it, you should check out The Buster Keaton Collection, which includes THE CAMERAMAN, SPITE MARRIAGE and FREE AND EASY - and then you are done. Well, you could also read the only book he wrote -My Wonderful World of Slapstick. (June '06 Update: "Industrial Strength Keaton"(DVD) just came out. The set includes rare industrial films, promotional films, commercials, TV appearances and outtakes.)

The Saphead: 1920
Includes the shorts ONE WEEK (1920) and THE HIGH SIGN (1920)

The Three Ages
Year: 1923
Including THE GOAT (1921) and MY WIFE'S RELATION (1922).

Our Hospitality / Sherlock, Jr.
Year: 1923/1924

The Navigator
Year: 1924
Includes shorts The Boat (1921) and The Love Nest (1923).

Go West
Year: 1925
Includes THE SCARECROW (1920) and THE PALEFACE (1921).

Seven Chances
Year: 1925
Shorts: Neighbors (1920) & The Balloonatic (1923)

Battling Butler
Year: 1926
Includes THE HAUNTED HOUSE (1921) and FROZEN NORTH (1922).

The General
Year: 1926
shorts: The Playhouse (1921) and Cops (1922)

College
Year: 1927
Includes THE ELECTRIC HOUSE (1922), HARD LUCK (in this version the ending is missing; but the complete version is found in the disc called Keaton Plus) (1921) and THE BLACKSMITH (1922).

Steamboat Bill, Jr.
Year: 1928
shorts: Convict 13 (1920) and Daydreams (1922)

Keaton Plus
Year: 1920-2001
Color home movies, complete short HARD LUCK, two Shorts from the 30's, commercials, TV shows and appearances. But best of all, Orson Welles talking about Keaton and The General.

Average customer rating:

THREE CHEERS
Love through the ages
Start here or finish here
Buster - the best there ever was
The Bus Man Cometh

Three Ages
Starring: Wallace Beery , Lionel Belmore , Louise Emmons , Lillian Lawrence , and Margaret Leahy
Director: Edward F. Cline
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Classics | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Comedy | Genres | DVD | Video

Classic Comedies | Comedy | Genres | DVD | Video

Comedy | Kids & Family | Genres | DVD | Video

DVDs Under $14.99 | Today's Deals in DVD | Special Features | DVD | Video

( T ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
Similar Items:

Battling Butler
Go West
College
Seven Chances
The Navigator

ASIN: B0000214GC
Release Date: 1999-11-23

Amazon.com

Buster Keaton's feature debut as a director (he shared credit with gagman and longtime collaborator Eddie Kline) spoofs, among other things, D.W. Griffith's Intolerance with a look at the trials of true love through the ages. Buster plays a hapless suitor in three different epochs: a bearskin-wearing, dinosaur-riding caveman in the Stone Age; a meek centurion with a ragtag chariot in ancient Rome; and a jazz age Romeo in Model T and black tie. In each time period, he vies for the object of his affections with burly, barrel-chested Wallace Beery, matching Beery's brawn and underhanded dirty tricks with sheer energy and ingenuity. The diminutive deadpan comic is hilarious under a shaggy fright wig and cartoon club as a thoroughly modern caveman, a dwarf among giants at the mercy of romantic Darwinism, but the more inventive sequences belong to the later ages. The rousing chariot race of the Roman segment is topped by a gymnastic chase through dungeons and throne rooms, and the modern section is capped by a mad flight from the police while he rushes to rescue his girl. Three Ages lacks the dramatic unity and sustained creativity of his later masterpieces, but the inventive gas and clever crosscutting turns what could be three individual shorts into an interactive live-action cartoon. Also included are "The Goat," a frantic "mistaken identity" knockabout comedy, and "My Wife's Relations," in which Buster finds himself accidentally married into a family of bullying Irish Catholics. --Sean Axmaker

Description

A brilliant historical satire teeming with inventive flourishes, Buster Keaton's "Three Ages" (1923, 63 min.) is a silent comedy of truly epic proportions. This clever parody of D.W. Griffith's "Intolerance" follows Buster's hard-luck romantic misadventures throughout world history: from the dawn of man in the Stone Age through the gladiator arenas of Ancient Rome to the city streets of the American Jazz Era. Accompanying "Three Ages" on this DVD are two rarely seen short works: "The Goat" (1921, 25 min.), with Buster mistaken for nefarious gunslinger Dead Eye Dan and caught up in a prolonged slapstick-filled chase, and "My Wife's Relations" (1922, 25 min.), a comedy of domestic turmoil that seems to reflect some of the tensions between Keaton and the Talmadges, his real-life in-laws at the time.

Customer Reviews:

THREE CHEERS.......2007-06-27

You needn't have seen Griffith's INTOLERANCE to appreciate what Keaton does here. This isn't really a parody of INTOLERANCE. Keaton simply borrowed Griffith's idea of exploring a theme or idea in different historic ages. The theme here is Romantic Love & the three ages are: Stone, Roman & Modern. Keaton's sweetheart through the ages is Margaret Leahy & his rival is Wallace Beery. There are wonderful bits throughout the movie. I especially like his travel by dinosaur, his caveman foot gear (which shows up in every comedy with cave men) & a chariot race that seems a parody of the one in BEN-HUR except this one came first. There is a restaurant scene in the Modern Age in which the Rival goes off to pay the bill & the Sweetheart decides to 'fix her face'. Once, sitting in a movie theatre what Keaton does next caused the woman to my left to laugh so violently I thought I was going to sustain an injury. It's a lovely movie.

Love through the ages.......2006-10-09

Keaton's first feature-lenght film is a funny revision of three historic periods ( the stone age, the roman empire and the 20th century ) that at time can be seen as a parody of Griffith's " Intolerance ". Keaton combines creatively scenes of the mentioned ages following the same analogical scheme than Griffith's masterpiece, but inversely to " Intolerance " here the misadventures of true love is the leitmotive of all the three " stories " and the emphatic and dramatic look of Griffith changes for Keaton's comic disaffectation . This operation, for other part, can be understand as a symptom of Keaton's care in his purpose to jump into a most ambitious production, since " The three ages " are in fact three shorts, this is, three variations around a same story put in one feature. The movie has ups and downs ( the next would be his first masterpiece " Our hospitality ), but although " The three ages " is far inferior than his later filmworks as director it has many splendid isolated sight-gags as that one with Keaton's driving a Ford that falls into pieces when he tries to cross a pathole ( it's not hard to imagine how Henry Ford received this commentary ) and turns out to be in all of its parts very amusing. Wallace Beery plays the role of Keaton's eternal rival. A Keaton's minor piece, but Keaton's signature is always a guarantee of fine artwork.

This DVD also contains Keaton's shorts: " The goat "( 1920 ), an hilarious slapstick farce with Keaton in the role of a man falsely accused, and " My wife's relations" ( 1920 ), a delicious satire of marriage-life.

Start here or finish here.......2006-04-25

Whether you're new to the work of Buster Keaton or exploring ways to complete your Keaton library you can't go wrong with this set. It contains his first feature length film as a director (Three Ages) and two shorts films, The Goat and My Wife's Relations. The editors of this set selected a good blend of Keaton themes and approaches to story-telling here. The Goat is the earliest of the set but is in some ways it is the perfect distillation of his character: a drifter, a victim of fate, machine and human will who somehow avoids disaster and even, surprisingly, wins the girl. Buster becomes falsely identified as an escaped criminal, chased continuously by cops, eventually exploiting his predicament by flashing the newspaper containing his mug shot to folks who want to give him a hard time. The climax is a great chase scene involving an elevator and set of stairs as Buster tries to rendezvous with his beloved who happens to be the daughter of the cop who has been pursuing him for most of the film! This film is simply unmatched as a spontaneous sequence of creative visual comedy.

My Wife's Relations (1922) is less satisfying because it strays from the best Keaton formula and degrades into a more purely slapstick genre. It is much more suggestive of the kind of film Buster did with Fatty Arbuckle 3 or 4 years previously; funny, creative, but more primitive and less satisfying to the modern viewer. It contains elements that are untypical of Keaton's character, such as physical violence towards a woman (not that the bully character of Keaton's wife did not deserve such abuse here!)

Finally, Three Ages is pure joyful visual comedy. It is a comic parody of Grittith's Intolerance, where the same theme is explored over three different historical periods. Here is the theme is love (boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy defeats rival and wins girl back) and the three ages are pre-historic, roman and modern (1920s); there are unlimited comic opportunities being explored here, as love and life are compared and contrasted. The energetic, optimistic mood is somewhat uncharacteristic of Keaton's films and more suggestive of Harold Lloyd, as Keaton's character overcomes bully obstacles with almost super-human skill and dexterity. In fact, the football game sequence looks forward to Lloyd's The Freshman, and the rescue of the girl from the polygamist predates Lloyd's Girl Shy. (Both Keaton and Lloyd were approaching their peek creatively during this period, and it's obvious that they played off each other's creative skills.)

By all means, buy this volume, whether alone or as part of the complete set.

Buster - the best there ever was.......2005-02-18

Keaton's Three Ages is one of his lesser works, but it shows the same attention to detail that would be so praised in his best-known work, The General. Keaton's comedy is so matter-of-fact that whenever he does a gag, it appears to make perfect sense to the viewer. If his Roman character is in a chariot race, and one of the dogs is lame, then of course he will stop, examine the dog, take a spare dog from a box on the back of the chariot, and exchange them!

My Wife's Relations does indeed reflect the tensions occurring in Keaton's married life at that time. He married Natalie Talmadge because she wanted to get married, and Buster seemed a likely prospect (I am quoting from various Keaton biographies here). The fact that he cast Natalie as the leading lady in Our Hospitality does not mean that they were getting along, but that he wanted to placate her. Keaton, who lived uneasily with his wife's relations, made the film as a way of complaining about his in-laws without actually voicing his complaints. The film is a bitingly funny one.

The Goat (in other words, scapegoat) is yet another fantastically funny short in which Keaton is a victim of fate. His sense of comedy was far beyond that of Chaplin or Lloyd, which is why it stands up so well today.

The Bus Man Cometh.......2004-07-13

This is one of the Bus Man's lesser known, but certainly not lesser works.

Three Ages is a tad jarring at first, because the three tales of romance mix ups criscross between the Flinstonic era (haha), Ancient Rome, and the Roaring 20s. Even if you don't usually like romatic comedy, the Bus man's personality and brilliant comic timing will make you smile and laugh. I'm not really sure if our man is actually being dragged by an elephant in the caveman scenes, but the lion he deals with in the Roman segment is obviously fake. The pre-Lost world animated segments of the Bus man riding the dinosaur is impressing and amusing even for modern audiences.

In either case, while this isn't exactly a knee-slapper, it's certainly an amusing and pleasant way to spend an hour and a half, as well as the shorts.

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