Neighbors
1920 · 17m · USA
Directed by Buster Keaton, Edward F. Cline
Genres: comedy, romance, silent
Tones: humorous, sensual, whimsical
A young man and the girl next door are desperately in love, but their feuding families — separated only by a backyard fence between neighboring tenements — will stop at nothing to keep them apart in this silent slapstick Romeo and Juliet.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Three-story human-tower escape that Keaton built his sets around his own body to pull off — that's not slapstick, that's architecture as comedy. Insane that it exists.
Keaton's three-man-high human-tower escape remains a stunt of jaw-dropping spatial command, set against a Romeo-and-Juliet skeleton he treats with characteristic dryness. Among his most acrobatically thrilling shorts.
Keaton built the tenement sets to his exact body measurements so the three-man human-tower escape would clear by inches — that's not stunt work, that's architecture. 17:29 runtime confirmed via YouTube.
Reviews
An excellent two-reel comedy with Romeo-and-Juliet-style romance, impressive stunt work, physical comedy, and many clever gags.
Keaton delivers some of his most inspired and tricky stunts, which thrill and bring up laughs out of the sheer spectacle of what is going on.