The Scarecrow
1920 · 20m · USA
Directed by Buster Keaton, Edward F. Cline
Two farmhands compete for the affections of the farmer's daughter in this silent comedy packed with ingenious Rube Goldberg-style gadgets, daring acrobatics, and a madcap chase that ends in an impromptu wedding on a speeding motorcycle.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The dual-purpose-object house at the start is one of the great formalist gags — every prop transforms. Keaton as proto-conceptual artist.
The opening one-room sequence of mutating furniture is a small architectural masterpiece, and the motorcycle wedding is among Keaton's most unexpected resolutions. Reliably brilliant.
The opening dual-purpose house is one of Keaton's purest mechanical-comedy set pieces — every object serves two functions, which means the gags were designed before the script. Practical engineering as storytelling.
Reviews
The Scarecrow is the closest thing to perfection that comedy shorts can achieve, brimming with youthful energy and silly fun.
The opening scene has so many ingenious bits flying by so fast that it takes several rewatches to even comprehend the thought that must have gone into it.