Hard Luck
1921 · 22m · USA
Directed by Buster Keaton, Edward F. Cline
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, humorous, whimsical
A down-on-his-luck young man attempts suicide after losing his job and his girl, but his inept attempts all fail. Bolstered by whiskey disguised as poison, he stumbles into an expedition to capture an armadillo, leading to a series of increasingly absurd adventures.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Suicide attempts played as deadpan slapstick is Keaton's cruelest streak, and the lost-then-recovered final gag is real cinephile mythology. Bleaker than people remember.
Keaton's archival reconstruction is itself the story—a lost-and-recovered gag he called the greatest laugh of his career, finally retrieved from a Russian print. The film history alone earns close attention.
Keaton's lost-for-sixty-years gag — recovered from a Russian archive print — was the one he called the biggest laugh of his career, which makes the reconstruction itself part of the craft conversation. 273MB Archive.org file should preserve the restored cut.
Reviews
Rough-edged, but all the familiar virtues - inventiveness, timing, athletic grace and an underlying melancholy - are present in a state of vigorous germination.
Hard Luck is astonishing in its surprisingly good black humor and crazy clever jokes.