Main Cast: Buster Keaton, Howard Truesdell, Kathleen Myers, Ray Thompson, Joe Keaton
Release Year: 1925
Country: US
Run Time: 7rl minutes
Plot
With this delightful film, Buster Keaton rivals Charlie Chaplin for comic poetry and pathos. Keaton's character, known only as Friendless, is a Midwestern boy who is down on his luck. After an abortive attempt to get by in the city, he follows Horace Greeley's advice to "Go West, young man!" As a result, Friendless winds up on a cattle ranch and is about the most unlikely cowboy imaginable (in fact, he never does trade in his porkpie hat for a ten-gallon). Various bits of comic business abound; standouts include the milking scene and a card game in which Friendless accuses a player of cheating. The sharpie tells The Great Stone Face "When you say that -- smile!" More importantly, Friendless finds true love -- not with the rancher's daughter (Kathleen Myers) but with Brown Eyes, a cow who seems nearly as out of place in the herd as Friendless does on the ranch. Cow and boy become devoted, but Brown Eyes is headed for the slaughterhouse. Friendless resolves to rescue her, sneaking on the train that's taking her and thousands of other cattle to the Los Angeles station. The herd escapes from the cattle cars at the destination and runs amok through downtown L.A.; it is then up to Friendless to round them up. Look closely during the hilarious stampede scene -- Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle plays a part in drag, and Keaton's father also has a bit in a barber shop. With the help of a costume shop, Friendless saves the day...and his cow. Go West is Keaton's most heartfelt film, and certainly one of his most underrated. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
Review
To look at Go West, like the much more celebrated The General, is to see one of the glories Buster Keaton's silent period -- and realize what the movies lost when MGM took over his career. Not that everything he did during this period was perfect, but as Go West -- one of his (undeservedly) less celebrated films of this era -- demonstrated, at least he knew what he was aiming for when he directed his own movies. And here, he achieved something special in terms of mixing comedy and pathos, working with a plot that reached out to the western genre, and back to D. W. Griffith's rural dramas, and all of it shaped to Keaton's special screen persona, amid physical oomedy, sight gags, and a cliffhanger plot element (will he save his beloved cow?). It's a movie whose achievements seem all the more impressive over time, even with the oft-parodied elements present, because Keaton's presence, behind as well as in front of the camera, gives it the spark that keeps it seeming fresh and bright, and funny, across eight decades. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Keaton portrays Friendless, who travels west to try to make his fortune. Once there, he tries his hand at bronco-busting, cattle wrangling, and dairy farming, eventually forming a bond with a cow named "Brown Eyes." Eventually he finds himself leading a herd of cattle through Los Angeles.
