Main Cast: Buster Keaton, Joe Roberts, Virginia Fox, Edward F. Cline
Release Year: 1922
Country: US
Run Time: 18 minutes
Plot
Although Cops is one of the all-time great two-reelers, its creator, Buster Keaton, never thought much of it. He felt it was just a run-of-the-mill chase film, which suggests that perhaps Keaton was his own worst critic -- the chase is what gives the film its brilliance. The film's beginning is a portent of things to come: Keaton longingly looks at his girl Virginia Fox through what appear to be prison bars. In reality, it's the gate to the mansion where she lives. The girl sends Keaton away, telling him not to return until he is a success in business. Keaton attempts to do so, acquiring, through convoluted means, a horse, wagon, and a load of stolen furniture. Somehow he drives his wagon into the middle of a policeman's parade, where an anarchist's bomb falls in his lap. Carelessly, he lights his cigarette with it and throws it away. It explodes in the middle of the parade, and suddenly Keaton is pursued by every cop in the city. The surrealistic vision of Keaton, small and alone, evading these hundreds upon hundreds of policemen is unforgettable. The filmmaker was both athlete and comic, and here he makes maximum use of both talents, racing down streets, playing a balancing act on a ladder, and casually grabbing hold of a car as it flies past, all in an attempt to evade the cops. When it was first released, this comic short confused many people -- its subtle statements (including its blend of humor and politics) went over the head of the average filmgoer of the '20s. But those same qualities make Cops a classic today. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
Review
Buster Keaton produced dozens of silent shorts, but Cops (1922) stands above most of them, for its masterfully developed narrative flow, wide range of visual jokes, incessantly manic energy, and bitterly funny conclusion. Keaton was distinguised from his peers Charles Chaplin and Harold Lloyd by his unblinking refusal to indulge in exaggerated reaction shots (he wasn't called The Great Stone Face for nothing), as well as an unparalleled choreography of comic action. Keaton's athleticism is put to work early and often in Cops, resulting in some of the era's most inspired sight gags. From point-of-view and identity-confusion tricks that result in Keaton's character's unwittingly hijacking a horse and buggy full of a policeman's entire household possessions, to physically demanding stunts pulled while trying to evade an entire police force, Keaton displays the mastery of silent film form that he would later develop with more sophistication in such full-length features as Sherlock Jr. and The General. In Cops, Keaton employs a familiar hook on which to hang the action (one he would return to in The General): the young man who will go to almost any lengths to win the love of his lady. However, unlike Chaplin, whose socially conscious films often displayed a Dickensian marshmallow heart, Keaton resolutely refused to stoop to overly sentimental gestures. Constantly subverting the predominant romanticism of the age, Keaton was careful to disarm potentially sappy images with slapstick gestures or melancholy plot twists, as he does in the ending of this frantically energetic film. ~ Dan Jardine, All Movie Guide
This very Kafka-esque film is Keaton's response to the Fatty Arbuckle scandal.[citation needed] Even though the central character's intentions are good, he cannot win, no matter how inventively he tries. He gets into various scraps with police officers throughout the film. Eventually, he unwittingly throws a bomb into a police parade and ends up being chased by a horde of cops.
At the end of the film, Keaton's character locks up the cops in the police station. However, the girl he is trying to woo disapproves of his behavior and gives him the cold shoulder. Therefore, he unlocks the police station and is immediately pulled in by the cops. The film ends with the title "The End" written on a tombstone with Keaton's pork pie hat propped on it.
One of Keaton's most iconic and brilliantly-constructed short films, Cops was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in their National Film Registry in 1997.
