Three Ages

This is a pleasant and funny combination of slapstick and satire, period humor and romantic comedy. It does not have quite the number of sustained chase/stunt sequences as in most of Keaton's features, but instead there are a lot of fine subtle gags of all different kinds.

In each of the "Three Ages", Buster and Wallace Beery vie for the affections of the same woman, with amusing and unpredictable results. The simple romantic triangle theme sets up a lot of good material, on the one hand lending itself to a lot of gags about the unchanging nature of romantic courtship, and on the other hand being used for a lot of deliberate anachronisms that are often extremely funny. Beery makes a nice foil for Keaton, and the girl's parents also have some good moments.

This one usually gets lost in the crowd among so many brilliant Keaton masterpieces, but it works very well and is definitely worth seeing for any fan of silent comedy.

Loosely intended as a satire of D.W. Griffith's Intolerance, The Three Ages was Buster Keaton's first attempt at a full length comedy feature. The only similarities to Intolerance are the opening "book" scene and the fact that similar stories through the ages are edited together into a complete film. Keaton's reasoning for appropriating this style was that if it didn't succeed as a feature film, it could be reduced to three two-reelers. Fortunately, The Three Ages succeeds brilliantly as a comedy and contains some of the funniest routines I've seen in any of Keaton's film. There is nothing unique or daring about the story lines. They are simple boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl plots, but the period satires are riotous and set the standard for future works by Mel Brooks and all films of this genre. However, I don't believe that anyone has ever topped this comedy. No one can play the lovable goof like Keaton and the stunts in this film are some of his best. In addition, Wallace Beery's appearance as Keaton's rival adds to this film's appeal. Anyone who thinks that comedy from the 1920's cannot be appreciated by modern audiences needs to see this movie.

Although the movie is clearly dated, audiences can still easily identify with the plight of hapless Buster in this timeless and very funny underdog tale. Buster fights against unkindly odds in three different ages: the Stone Age, The Roman Age, and the Moden Age, playing almost the same character with just a change of scenery to help us identify the different "ages". In this movie we see one of the earliest comedic depictions of the "caveman" stereotype, who wins his love not by romance but by brute force, as well as a funny twist on Roman gladiatorial combat, two comedic sketches that long predate such spoofs as Mel Brooks' "History of the World: Part I". The underlying theme of the movie is simple yet convincing: Although the times may have-a-changed, we still face the same struggles even in modern times that we fought in prehistoric times in order to "win the girl" (keep in mind this is the theme of 1923 America, a time when chauvinism was still en vogue). It is interesting to look at this movie over eighty years later, and consider how dramatically things have changed from this movie's "modern times" to now.

I'd have to rate this as slightly above-average Keaton fare. It shows Buster trying to romance the girl away from Wallace Beery, and what would have transpired if the story had taken place in (1) the Stone Age; (2) The Roman Age, and (3) The Modern Age.

I liked them in that order, too, with more laughs with the older periods of time, although I laughed at the hardest at a couple of segments in the Roman Age. My favorite was the chariot race held in the sand. That had a number of clever things in the segment. The brief bit with the lion was funny, too, sort of a parody of the Biblical story of Daniel in the lion's den.

They were smart only going five minutes or so with each age and then going back with the story each time. Each "age" had four or five segments in total.

Nothing hilarious but definitely worth your time if you are checking out silent film comedies

For me, Keaton's decision to make a parody of Griffith's Intolerance so that if the feature (his first) failed he could re-edit and release it as three two-reelers is what diminishes the enjoyment for me. The film jumps back and forth between the three time periods, and so all of them seem to be over before they've really begun, and the film has something of a disjointed feel. Perhaps this is because the film does actually feel as if it is three two-reelers spliced together rather than an actual feature.

The comedy is unevenly paced, but when it hits the mark it is near-perfect. Highlights include Keaton's drunken encounter with Wallace Beery, other diners, and a crab at a restaurant, and the jaw-dropping leap from one roof to another at what looks like hundreds of feet above the ground (apparently the buildings were short sets placed on a bridge overlooking a view of Los Angeles. Just as well, because Keaton failed to make the leap successfully and fell from the second building, a real-life mishap that remains in the film). Keaton slides through a window, across a room, down a pole (at this point we realise he is in a fire station although he doesn't) and lands on the back of a fire engine that returns him to the police station from which he has just escaped. The whole sequence is both side-splitting and astounding. The look on Keaton's face as he looks quizzically up at the pole he has just descended is priceless. Perhaps because of his status as a comic genius we tend to forget how good an actor Keaton was .

I liked the modern sequence best, and had it been released as a short I believe it would be considered one of his classics. The caveman sequence is OK, but the Roman era story tends to drag.

It's been well publicised that this was competition winner Margaret Leahy's only film because she was so untalented as an actress, and it's true she doesn't light any fires while on-screen. But the impact of her ineptitude in front of the camera is cleverly avoided by the likes of Keaton and Beery merely acting around her as if she were just another prop.

Overall, this isn't one of Keaton's best - although that is probably because this is his first feature. Keaton himself thought it was just OK and, given his instinctive sense for what works, perhaps that should tell us all we need to know...