Looking a lot taller, and even sillier, than he did as a funny cowboy sidekick years later, Al St. John gives an athletic performance in this Fatty Arbuckle programmer.
There isn't really a plot. It's just a bunch of vignettes intended to showcase Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle as star and as director. But Fatty pulls out all the stops, even anticipating Milton Berle by appearing in drag -- something he did often.
Neither Al (years later "Fuzzy") St. John nor Buster Keaton, nor, in fact, anyone else, gets billing credit in this rather primitive comedy. It's all Fatty's show.
But he lets the other players have their moments, and many of those moments are fun, even if the scenes are rather disjointed.
His wife is played, very broadly but tellingly, by the generally unknown Agnes Neilson. She dominates just about every scene she's in.
The flighty and gold-digging and unfaithful girl-friend is the only slightly better-known Alice Mann who -- this is the opposite of a spoiler -- looks mighty fetching in a skin-tight but fully covering swim suit.
Other men flow in and out, but the three, Arbuckle, Keaton, St. John, who made quite a few pictures together, pretty much own the movie.
Keaton had not yet become the great stone face. He made a lot of facial gestures somewhat reminding me of Stan Laurel.
But he, Arbuckle, and St. John keep an audience's attention with their physicality. Keaton and St. John were wonderfully acrobatic, here and in so many other movies. Arbuckle, despite his size, is amazingly agile, and in a couple scenes dances so lightly, it's hard to believe one's eyes.
"Coney Island" is a fascinating look at early-movie-making -- although 1917 is not really all that early, "The Birth of a Nation," for example, having been made four years before -- and especially a fascinating look at the three male leads early in their respective careers.
If you care about the history and heritage of movie-making, and want to have a good time while educating yourself, please do watch "Coney Island."
There isn't really a plot. It's just a bunch of vignettes intended to showcase Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle as star and as director. But Fatty pulls out all the stops, even anticipating Milton Berle by appearing in drag -- something he did often.
Neither Al (years later "Fuzzy") St. John nor Buster Keaton, nor, in fact, anyone else, gets billing credit in this rather primitive comedy. It's all Fatty's show.
But he lets the other players have their moments, and many of those moments are fun, even if the scenes are rather disjointed.
His wife is played, very broadly but tellingly, by the generally unknown Agnes Neilson. She dominates just about every scene she's in.
The flighty and gold-digging and unfaithful girl-friend is the only slightly better-known Alice Mann who -- this is the opposite of a spoiler -- looks mighty fetching in a skin-tight but fully covering swim suit.
Other men flow in and out, but the three, Arbuckle, Keaton, St. John, who made quite a few pictures together, pretty much own the movie.
Keaton had not yet become the great stone face. He made a lot of facial gestures somewhat reminding me of Stan Laurel.
But he, Arbuckle, and St. John keep an audience's attention with their physicality. Keaton and St. John were wonderfully acrobatic, here and in so many other movies. Arbuckle, despite his size, is amazingly agile, and in a couple scenes dances so lightly, it's hard to believe one's eyes.
"Coney Island" is a fascinating look at early-movie-making -- although 1917 is not really all that early, "The Birth of a Nation," for example, having been made four years before -- and especially a fascinating look at the three male leads early in their respective careers.
If you care about the history and heritage of movie-making, and want to have a good time while educating yourself, please do watch "Coney Island."