1920 Directed by Buster Keaton, Edward F. Cline
The story involves two newlyweds, Keaton and Seely, who receive a build-it-yourself house as a wedding gift. The house can be built, supposedly, in "one week." A rejected suitor secretly re-numbers packing crates. The movie recounts Keaton's struggle to assemble the house according to this new "arrangement."
La maison démontable, Una setmana, Една седмица, Frigo staví dům, Flitterwochen im Fertighaus, Una semana, Viikko rakennusmiehenä, La Maison démontable, Una settimana, 文化生活一週間, 일주일, Uma Semana, Одна неделя, Bir Hafta, 一周
USANR
USA
oh to live in buster keaton’s world of trampoline spring floors, and effortlessly carrying pianos on your shoulders, and porch railings that turn into ladders, and paint-by-number houses that spin on their axes in a rainstorm, and for nothing bad to matter as long as you’ve got a girl to kiss.
my pick for keaton's best short by a mile. a perfect merging of his death-defying physicality with the most literal construction of gag setpieces he could've possibly come up: domestic romcom action movie about attempting to build the shittiest, most dangerous house ever put on film. manages to fit so many incredibly cinematic and complicated little visual jokes into the broad strokes which are nothing short astounding on their own but the most impressive thing about this is that he somehow didn't die making it. a few stunts in here that even 100 years later are still distressing to watch.
From a technical standpoint, One Week is one of the most impressive short films I've ever seen. The stunts are absolutely incredible from the very beginning, and they only get bigger and better by the end. Buster Keaton and his newlywed wife are gifted a plot of land and try to build a home for themselves, but things quickly begin to go wrong when the pieces get mixed up. The way Keaton plays with the house prop displays both his amazing talent and wonderful humor, and makes this short a real delight to watch. There's not much storytelling to support the stunts, but they're so good that it doesn't even matter. Definitely watch this one if you're a fan of Keaton.
I’ve rewatched the first three John Wicks and I can’t go see Chapter 4 again yet, so I settled for the next best thing: Buster Keaton, whose dedication to insane stunts and beating the shit out of himself for his audience’s pleasure makes him the true cinematic forefather of the Baba Yaga.
i don't have any idea how keaton had that house spin around in the storm, that shit is straight-up movie magick to me, how the hell?
Cinematic Time Capsule
1920 Marathon - Film #42
Good Luck… You’ll Need It!
It’s Buster’s wedding day and his uncle gives the newlyweds their own build-it-yourself home from the Portable House Company. What could possibly go wrong???
After 3 years and 14 shorts of working with, and learning from ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle, Buster Keaton is finally given his own production unit and this first solo-short pulls out all the stops and manages to bring down the house… literally.
✅ The first fully revolving 360 camera shot in movie history
✅ A wonderfully naughty fourth wall break
✅ Several jaw dropping stunts
This stunning piece of work is funny, engaging, incredibly inventive and unbelievably ambitious. No models were used, and all of…
"To give this house a snappy appearance put it up according to the numbers on the boxes."
A newlywed couple is beset with zany tribulations in their effort to erect a prefabricated house.
Though Buster Keaton and Edward F. Cline had already collaborated on the middling The High Sign, that short was temporarily shelved because Keaton found its style too derivative of his mentor Fatty Arbuckle. Thus the marvelous, vaudeville-infused One Week became the first of many inspired two-reelers from Buster Keaton Productions, the relatively independent production unit granted to Keaton in 1920 by Metro grandee Joseph M. Schenck.
Though the title is a reference to Elinor Glyn's infamous 1907 erotic novel Three Weeks, One Week is above all a…
Pitch-perfect both from the slapstick side, the comedy side and the great technique in the middle. This is easily the best and most impressively-looking Buster Keaton short films. Surely a lot of effort was put while making this comic little jewel. Perhaps my favorite Keaton short. I definitely wouldn't buy that house.
100/100
