Here's seven and a half minutes of one of my favorite movies, only in Spanish.
The thing I'd like to point out in this clip from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is the scene with Buster Keaton and the lack of English won't matter. In the full version of the movie as it was originally released, Mr. Keaton had a somewhat larger part, including a phone conversation scene with Spencer Tracy. When the film was cut down (as explained here), that scene was tossed. That's right: Someone actually threw away the only scene ever filmed featuring America's greatest dramatic actor and America's greatest comedic actor.
Okay: One of America's greatest dramatic actors and one of America's greatest comedic actors. Fine. Should we argue?
Anyway, everything that's left of his performance in the film is all in this clip and it's very brief. Still, I submit it's evidence of why Buster Keaton was one of America's greatest comedic actors. He is given absolutely nothing to work with and somehow, he makes it funny. Every single time I've seen this movie with an audience — must be twenty times or more — Keaton has gotten huge laughs, just through his body movements.
This is possible because he is not stunt-doubled in a scene where they might have decided to substitute a double. (And it's just a coincidence, by the way, that I'm discussing this and Mr. Keaton's one-time stuntman died recently. I planned to link to this clip and to write about this before I knew that.)
Keaton was 67 or 68 years old when this was filmed — not as agile as he once was — and of course, he was Buster Keaton. Nothing puts a damper on a funny movie better than having a comedy legend killed or injured on the set. Since Keaton was not going to be far from cars that were going to be crashing into one another, someone probably said, "Hey, we'd better put a stuntman in for him," just as — and you sure can tell from the cut — they put in stuntfolks for all the other stars.
And I'm guessing the director, Stanley Kramer, said no. There is no way any stuntman was going to move like Buster Keaton…no way any stuntman was going to get any laugh, let alone a big one, running around the way Buster did. I'd wager Kramer decided to take the risk of putting Keaton close to harm's way, surely after discussing it with the man. From all accounts, Keaton — even in his last year of life — never shrank from taking a fall or smashing into a wall or anything for the good of the scene, and I'm sure he'd not only have agreed but insisted.
The rest of the clip is cars chasing around Southern California. The first scenes start with the cabs coming down to Pacific Coast Highway via a road in Santa Monica called the California Incline. It's one of the few locations in the movie that's still pretty much identifiable if you go there today. The amusement park you can briefly glimpse was a place called (at different times) The Pike or Nu Pike down in Long Beach. The scenes with Keaton were done at Channel Islands Harbor and the shots before and after are on Malibu Road and Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.
Anyway, enjoy it. Or better still, get the whole movie and enjoy it more in English.
