"Our Hospitality" is Buster Keaton's first proper feature film. He starred in the dreadful "The Saphead" (1920), but had no input behind the camera, and "Three Ages" (1923) is more of an anthology of three shorts in parody of D. W. Griffith's mammoth "Intolerance" (1916). Thus, this was the first time he had to fully work out how to adapt to the longer format. He had Charlie Chaplin's "The Kid" (1921) and Harold Lloyd's "Grandma's Boy" (1922), and Fatty Arbuckle had already begun on his short-lived feature career, too, to guide him on the insertion of dramatic elements and how to base the gags around the character development, as opposed to the more slapdash, slapstick arrangement of the shorts, as nonetheless hilarious as they could be.
The result would remain one of his best features, although I'm partial to the cinematically-reflexive "Sherlock Jr." (1924). It's aged terrifically well, including an all-time great waterfall climax, but the amusing irony of its historical value is that the film is now nearly 100 years old, made in 1923, and it's fascinated with and mocking of a world from nigh a century before it, of 1830. And, from riding a dandy horse to prefiguring his own "The General" (1927) in ridiculous fashion with a replica train of the so-called "Stephenson's Rocket," so chosen precisely for how ridiculous it looked, Keaton demonstrates his dedication to production values. A lot of comedic mileage is had here of this "iron monster" of the tracks, to boot. I especially love the gag of a man tossing rocks at the conductor so as to collect the firewood he throws back at him in retaliation.
Nominally, the burlesque here is of the Hatfield-McCoy feud that plays out like "Romeo and Juliet" in the Appalachian Mountains. This begins with a cold open played dramatically straight establishing the ongoing feud back in 1910. I'm intrigued by the suggestion made by several others that this opening is like a bad D. W. Griffith drama, especially considering Keaton was no stranger to parodying dramatic filmmakers, including the aforementioned "Three Ages" or his merciless takedown of William S. Hart Westerns and Erich von Stroheim melodramas in "The Frozen North" (1922). Some of this may be seen with the other silent clowns, as well, such as Chaplin's "A Burlesque on Carmen" (1915) being an imitation of Cecil B. DeMille's "Carmen" (1915), and Mack Sennett's Keystone basically got its start by making fun of Griffith's one-reel last-minute rescues of damsels in distress.
So, what if we extrapolate this insinuation that Keaton is imitating Griffith in the opening scene here. Note that Griffith, rather notoriously now, prided himself as a Southern--and what was once considered Western (Kentucky)--gentleman, son of a Confederate soldier. As a young man, he set out on his career by moving to New York City, which is where the movies were made at the time. This set him on a path of cinematically glamorizing his white Southern heritage with disastrous results (namely, resurrecting the Klan). Although he casts an African-American actor in the servant role, Keaton largely sidesteps any racial issues here, but he makes an utter mockery of Southern hospitality, as he comically exploits the Canfields' honor of not killing him while he's a guest in their home to stay alive--and while he's at it, romancing the Canfield daughter, played by Natalie Talmadge, also Keaton's real-life wife (their son and his father also make an appearance). To top it all off, Keaton out does Griffith's river rapids climax from "Way Down East" (1920)--not an easy task by any means, as that, too, is an awesome sequence.
Nobody matched Keaton for taking physical risks for his art, either. Reportedly, he nearly drowned when filming the sequence in an actual river. The breathtaking rope swing, on the other hand, was performed within a constructed set and with miniature scenery, as well as with an apparent and brief dummy substitution for Talmadge, although it looks fantastic and still probably wasn't exactly safe. This is the same guy who broke his neck in another water-based stunt in "Sherlock Jr." The only one who ended up dying from the production, however, was Joe Roberts, the heavy playing the Canfield patriarch, who had a stroke during filming and would subsequently die from another a month after wrapping. In the meantime, he returned to finish filming. For good and bad, they don't make 'em like this anymore.
