Difference between revisions of "The Frozen North"

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(→‎Plot: substituted plot from NEIGHBORS)
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==Plot==
 
==Plot==
The film opens near the "last stop", a subway terminal (apparently) in Alaska, which appears to be emerging from deep snow in the middle of nowhere. A tough-looking cowboy emerges. He arrives at a small settlement, finding people gambling in a saloon. He tries to rob them by scaring them with a cutout taken from a poster of a man holding a gun, which he places at the window, to appear as if he has an accomplice. He tells the gamblers to raise their hands in the air. Frightened, they hand over their cash, but soon they find out the truth when a drunk man looks closer over the cutout and tips it over. Keaton attempts to hand the cash that he has been collecting back, but is thrown out through the window.
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[Sample plot taken from the [[w:Neighbors (1920 film)|''Neighbors'' article on Wikipedia]] because the Wikipedia plot summary for ''The Frozen North'' was too long.]
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[[Image:Frozen north buster keaton.jpg|thumb|left|Keaton offers flowers to his pretty neighbor (Bonnie Hill).]]
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"The Boy" and "the Girl" are young lovers who live in tenements, the rear of which face each other, with backyards separated by a wooden fence. Their families constantly feud over the lovers' relationship. Each morning the Boy and the Girl exchange love letters through holes in the fence, much to the dismay of their families who insist they stay away from one another. The Boy sneaks into the Girl's bedroom window as the parents are arguing but he is caught by the Girl's father who ties him to a clothes line and slowly sends him back over to his family's house. After much arguing and fighting the two families eventually go to court to settle their differences. The Boy demands the right to marry the Girl, and the judge insists that the two families not interfere in their plans.
  
Next, he mistakenly enters a house thinking that it is his own house. Inside, from behind, he sees a man and a woman kissing before a fire. Thinking the woman is his wife, he begins to cry and shoots the couple, moments later to realize his mistake, whereupon he makes his exit. He goes to his own house, where he finds his wife, who greets him, but he spurns her coldly, and she screams in anguish. She goes to a wall, and a vase drops on her head and knocks her unconscious; Keaton glances at her momentarily without interest, and then goes back to thinking again. While investigating the shooting of the couple, a passing policeman then knocks at Keaton's door after hearing his wife scream. Keaton saves himself from arrest by playing music on a gramophone and pretending to dance with his unconscious wife, acting as if all were normal. Seeing this, the officer turns and leaves again, and he drops her on the floor.
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On the day of the wedding the two families are naturally hostile to one another. After the wedding is delayed due to the Boy's belt repeatedly breaking and in his pants continuously falling down, the Girl's father discovers that the ring the Boy intends to give to her is a cheap 10-cent ring purchased from [[w:F. W. Woolworth Company|Woolworths]]. He angrily calls off the wedding and drags the Girl home. Determined to rescue his love and with the help of his two groomsmen, the Boy uses trapeze skills to snag the Girl and the two run off together. They eventually find themselves in the coal shed of a blacksmith who has been ordained as a minister who pronounces them husband and wife.
 
 
He looks out of the window and sees his pretty neighbor. He quickly dons an elegant white suit and picks flowers (mysteriously growing from the deep snow; a sign reads "Keep Off the Grass"). He attempts to woo her, but she doesn't appear to favor him. Her husband comes back inside to get something he forgot, and angrily takes his wife away with him after finding Keaton inside the house with her moments after he had left. Keaton bares his teeth threateningly at him as he leaves and they stare each other in the eye.
 
 
 
The neighbors leave on a sled for a new, even more bleak northerly location. Keaton gets a "car" (a cross between a dog sled and an early automobile, with an engine) driven by a friend to follow them, but it breaks down, so he has to hail a passing "taxi" (a horse drawn sled with upholstery). The taxi is stopped by a [[Parking enforcement officer|traffic warden]] (riding a classic [[Harley-Davidson]] motorcycle frame mounted on skies driven by a [[Pusher configuration|pusher]] [[Propeller (aeronautics)|propeller]] - an actual mode of transport, not a joke for the film), but they get away: Keaton is up to his old tricks—he flips the propeller around to reverse the thrust, so after they drive off in the middle of the traffic stop, the officer goes backward into a lake when he restarts his engine to chase them. Near the [[North Pole|north pole]] (sign: North Pole, 3 miles south; perhaps it means [[North Pole, Alaska]]?), he and Roberts find a hotel-like [[igloo]] with wall-hangings of a stag's head and a guitar. In a gag Keaton tries to hang his hat on a stag head antler but it falls off. They attempt to survive by fishing in the manner of the Eskimos. Keaton makes snow-shoes from guitars and attempts to catch fish using tinned [[Sardines as food|sardines]] as bait, but just creates trouble—he first falls through the ice and then tries to fish—but the only things he "catches" are another fisherman's strung fish and the other fisherman himself.
 
 
 
[[Image:Frozen north buster keaton.jpg|thumb|left|Keaton offers flowers to his pretty neighbor (Bonnie Hill).]]
 
Forced to flee back to the igloo, where his companion is using a [[carpet sweeper]] on the ice floor, Keaton sees his pretty neighbor again in her new hut. Apparently fortified by drinking a [[Coca-Cola|bottle of cola]], grimacing as if it were strong liquor, he decides he will go and make another attempt to win or coerce the other woman. He appears at her hut, and enters, to her distress. Upon hearing the husband returning to the hut to show his wife some gold he had just panned out of the water, Keaton resolutely bars the door with his arm, to prevent the husband from entering, only to discover the door hinges on the other side. After jumping and falling out the window, he disguises himself as a snowman to elude the husband when he runs out of the door in pursuit, and returns to the hut, where he is momentarily shown dressed as [[Erich von Stroheim]]'s character from the film ''[[Foolish Wives]]'', to indicate his villainous intent to force himself on her (or her apprehension of his intent). The husband reappears outside, searching for his wife, scanning the horizon; while he is searching for her, Roberts approaches him wearing clumsy cross-country skies, without being noticed, and stabs him in the arm. The husband appears to punch the friend so hard he flies through the air and lands headfirst in the ice fishing hole from earlier in the film. The husband returns to find his wife weeping on the floor as Keaton stands over her. He pulls out his own knife, and wrestles with Keaton. Keaton's wife appears outside the window, and shoots her husband in the back as they struggle. As husband and wife embrace, the wounded Keaton lying on the floor takes a [[derringer]] from his pocket and points it at the husband, but at that moment a janitor wakes Keaton up in the front row of a film theater (the gun in the last scene turns out to be a folded newspaper in his hand) and Keaton realizes that it was all a dream.
 
  
 
==Production==
 
==Production==

Revision as of 18:31, 14 September 2022

(This is a sample article for a BUI 301 assignment. It was largely copied from the Wikipedia article on The Frozen North.)

The Frozen North is a 1922 American short comedy film directed by and starring Buster Keaton. The film is a parody of early Western films, especially those of William S. Hart. The film was written by Keaton and Edward F. Cline. The film runs for around 17 minutes.[1]

Plot

[Sample plot taken from the Neighbors article on Wikipedia because the Wikipedia plot summary for The Frozen North was too long.]

Keaton offers flowers to his pretty neighbor (Bonnie Hill).

"The Boy" and "the Girl" are young lovers who live in tenements, the rear of which face each other, with backyards separated by a wooden fence. Their families constantly feud over the lovers' relationship. Each morning the Boy and the Girl exchange love letters through holes in the fence, much to the dismay of their families who insist they stay away from one another. The Boy sneaks into the Girl's bedroom window as the parents are arguing but he is caught by the Girl's father who ties him to a clothes line and slowly sends him back over to his family's house. After much arguing and fighting the two families eventually go to court to settle their differences. The Boy demands the right to marry the Girl, and the judge insists that the two families not interfere in their plans.

On the day of the wedding the two families are naturally hostile to one another. After the wedding is delayed due to the Boy's belt repeatedly breaking and in his pants continuously falling down, the Girl's father discovers that the ring the Boy intends to give to her is a cheap 10-cent ring purchased from Woolworths. He angrily calls off the wedding and drags the Girl home. Determined to rescue his love and with the help of his two groomsmen, the Boy uses trapeze skills to snag the Girl and the two run off together. They eventually find themselves in the coal shed of a blacksmith who has been ordained as a minister who pronounces them husband and wife.

Production

The film was photographed on location at Donner Lake outside Truckee, California, in mid-winter. The film's opening intertitles give it its mock-serious tone, and are taken from The Shooting of Dan McGrew by Robert W. Service.

Many of the gag sequences from The Frozen North, including the fishing sequence and wearing guitars as snowshoes while carrying a mattress, were later used by The Three Stooges in Rockin' thru the Rockies.

The gag of a protagonist being in a film in a dream sequence and waking up in the end is also in the film Sherlock Jr..

Cast

  • Buster Keaton as The Bad Man
  • Joe Roberts as The Driver
  • Sybil Seely as Wife
  • Bonnie Hill as The Pretty Neighbor
  • Freeman Wood as Her Husband
  • Edward F. Cline as The Janitor

See also

References

  1. This is a reference.

External links