IMDb > Three Ages (1923)

Three Ages (1923) More at IMDbPro »

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Overview

User Rating:
7.3/10   1,028 votes
MOVIEmeter: ?
Up 12% in popularity this week. See why on IMDbPro.
Director:
Writer:
Buster Keaton (writer)
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Contact:
View company contact information for Three Ages on IMDbPro.
Release Date:
24 September 1923 (USA) more
Genre:
Tagline:
A Metro Picture in 6 Parts
Plot:
The misadventures of Buster in three seperate historical periods. full summary | add synopsis
User Comments:
Layers, parts more (16 total)

Cast

  (Complete credited cast)
Margaret Leahy ... The Girl

Wallace Beery ... The Villain

Buster Keaton ... The Boy
Lillian Lawrence ... The Girl's Mother
Joe Roberts ... The Girl's Father
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Additional Details

Runtime:
63 min | Spain:55 min
Country:
Aspect Ratio:
1.33 : 1 more
Sound Mix:

Fun Stuff

Trivia:
A widely-circulated error credits Oliver Hardy for this film. He was not in it. It was the similar-looking rotund comic Kewpie Morgan. more
Movie Connections:
Featured in The Fall (2006) more

FAQ

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8 out of 8 people found the following comment useful.
Layers, parts, 8 December 2006
Author: tedg (tedg@FilmsFolded.com) from Virginia Beach

The more time I spend with old films, the more of a giant I see Keaton to be. I'm beginning to think that we all need to see a lot of him, which is why I wandered into this. It seems to have been made only because they had access to a Roman set.

The setup is that a courtship story is presented in three eras: a cave-man setup, a Roman context and a modern one. All are based on film notions of those eras of course. Unlike most movie humor of the time, the joke here isn't in embellishing the story with humorous decoration. Its in the difference among the stories.

Its a clever piece of what I call folding, and you will see at least one scene here that I swear is quoted in "Rashomon."

So there's the idea of the thing, which is worthwhile, but now I've explained it, you hardly have to see it. The jokes are trite. But there is one scene that I recall over and over. I think Keaton did it elsewhere and several others too, but here it is the best.

He's driving a car, a rickety one to his girl's house. (This is in the modern setting, obviously.) He hits a bump and the car falls to pieces. And I just don't mean the wheels fall off, the car quite literally disassembles into the parts that went into the factory and there he sits among hundreds of items. I have no idea how he did this. The car really is moving as a car, and then in an instant it is in pieces.

Wonderful.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

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