List Price: $24.95You Pay Only: $22.49 You Save: $2.46 (10%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 2 to 4 weeks
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9786305701262
Format: Black & White, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
ISBN: 6305701261
Label: Kino Video
Manufacturer: Kino Video
Number Of Items: 1
Picture Format: Academy Ratio
Publisher: Kino Video
Release Date: January 11, 2000
Running Time: 96 minutes
Sales Rank: 62058
Studio: Kino Video
Theatrical Release Date: December 22, 1920
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Editorial Review:
Description:
Love has never been funnier or more difficult to manage than in the immortal Buster Keaton comedies brought together on this DVD. Opening with a newly restored Technicolor sequence, 'Seven Chances' (1925, 56 min.) is a film often imitated but never rivaled for hilarity and visual virtuosity. Keaton stars as Jimmie Shannon, a romantically jinxed young man who must marry by 7:00 pm to inherit seven million dollars. Comedic courtship is further pursued in 'Neighbors' (1920, 18 min.), a 1920 short in which Buster tries to woo his tenement sweetheart in spite of the barriers that stand between them. Then, in 'The Balloonatic' (1923, 22 min.), Buster is carried by hot air from a cityside amusement park to the rustic country where--in a series of delightfully inventive vignettes--he ineptly struggles for survival and again somehow manages to stumble into romance.
Amazon.com:
The reputation of Buster Keaton's Seven Chances rests almost solely on its outrageous finale, a brilliant cascade of comic invention that begins with a church full of blushing brides and builds to a surreal chase of epic proportions. The hapless groom is pursued by a angry mob of women clad in white lace and veils and ends up dodging rolling stones and massive boulders while fleeing an avalanche, never once losing his trademark deadpan. Buster plays a struggling lawyer who will inherit a fortune if he marries by 7 p.m. of his 27th birthday--the very day he receives notice of the potential windfall. When his longtime sweetheart turns him down, he frantically searches for someone--anyone--to wed. While Seven Chances doesn't have the sustained inspiration of his best films, Keaton fills the picture with inventive moments and clever ideas, notably a sustained series of desperate proposals (the 'seven chances' of the title) that lead to the climactic swarm of aggressive brides. The biggest weakness is an embarrassing blackface performance that has only become more offensive with the years. Jean Arthur briefly appears as a switchboard operator. The film was remade in 1999 as The Bachelor with Chris O'Donnell. The DVD also features two short films: 'Neighbors,' the story of young lovers who flirt across the fence that separates their houses and their bickering families, and 'The Balloonatic,' which despite the presence of a hot air balloon is actually a gag-filled camping comedy. --Sean Axmaker
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Keaton's Ruthless Romance
"Seven Chances" (1925) is a fine example of Buster Keaton placing his stylistic imprint on material not specifically tailored for him. In fact, the premise appears ideal for Harold Lloyd: a stockbroker belatedly discovers he will inherit $7 million if he marries by 7 p.m. that evening, yet only has a few hours of time remaining. What could have been a traditional thrill comedy emerges as a surreal nightmare - featuring one of the great climaxes in movie history, with hundreds of potential brides (and an avalanche of boulders) chasing Buster through the Southern California landscape. The 20-minute sequence is propelled by Keaton's stunning athleticism and a remarkable editing precision. Like many Keaton silents, "Seven Chances" seamlessly fuses his deadpan expressiveness with an expert command of the film medium. He transforms a simple farce into a provocative examination of ruthless romance in which deadly boulders are preferable to devouring women.
Rating:  - A range of comedy styles
This thoughtfully prepared collection of 3 Buster Keaton movies, 2 shorts from early and late in his pre-feature period, and the feature Seven Chances, show a wide range of comedy styles, from slapstick, to more refined visual humor, to what we would today call situation comedy, where laughs come from unusual or embarrassing encounters.
The earliest in the collection, "Neighbors" from 1920 is in some way the most satisfying of the set, although Keaton had not yet here fully developed his mature style of humor. Here there is still a stylistic resemblance to the earlier association with Fatty Arbuckle. The backyard love affair, for example, that opens the film resembles Arbuckle's 1915 classic "Fatty's Plucky Pup". In Neighbors there is more story, revolving around the standard theme of feuding parents, and the eventual need for the couple to elope. There is sweetness, youthful energy, and innocence in the entire movie, as well as great acrobatics, including the innovative climactic escape involving two levels of men being carried on the shoulders of other men.
The Balloonatic (1923), near the end of the period in which Buster was making short films, is less rich in comic ideas and lacks the energy and freshness of the earlier film. There is almost no slapstick but rather visual humor involving being trapped in a balloon and trying to survive in the wild and win an unwilling girl. Keaton loves using bodies of water and other objects of nature for comedic props, ... Read More
Rating: - Keaton's marriage life slapstick farce
This splendid slapstick farce was Keaton's revenge to the tensions and bitterness of the marriage life with his first wife, Nathalie Talmadge. The film is a torrent of very calculated sight-gags with a unstoppable rythm that arrives to its "climactic" explosion in the spectacular scene in which the character incarnated by Keaton, a wrecked lawyer who have to be married by 7 p.m. of his 27th birthday to inherit a big fortune ( this is, in 24 hours ), must choose between five hundred spiteness brides or a rocks avalanche. The film knew a very poor remake in 1998 called " The bachelor ". Another masterwork of one of the greatest technician and comic artists of cinema.
This DVD edition contains too the early Keaton's shorts : "Neighbors" ( 1920 ), a shakesperian underground farce and " The balloonatic "( 1920 )
Rating: - One of the funniest
This is one of the funniest, most clever videos in my collection. The short film "Neighbors" is full of ingenious physical comedy. You can see how being the son of a family of acrobats has filtered into Buster Keaton's performance style.
Rating: - Best Chance for Buster
Frankly, I'd been a bit disappointed in the Buster films I'd seen before this one. Perhaps it was the scrappy condition they'd reached me in. This film, however, turned out to be a treasure and a masterpiece. Finally I became fully aware of how funny and downright amazing Keaton could be. It's strange that other viewers report that he didn't like it himself. Personally, I enjoyed the obviously well-structured plot, the elegant clothes, Buster's incredible athleticism, and as the story came to its ever zanier climax I was laughing out loud, very loud. Aside from the obvious fact that the whole world, not just Hitler's Germany, was unbelievably racist in the 1920s, there seems to be something of a feminist message underlying this story. One of the best scenes is where the vast army of women on the rampage totally flatten two football teams. Yikes, here comes women's lib! I'll grab my hat and run.
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