Our Hospitality (1923)

Of course there’s a girl (Natalie Talmadge, whom Keaton later married), and of course she turns out to be a Canfield, and of course Willie’s determination to stay away from the Canfields doesn’t work out quite as planned.

Much of the humor involves a riff on Southern hospitality, as the Canfields decide that they can’t kill Willie while he’s their guest — i.e., while he’s under their roof. A cat-and-mouse game ensues, with the Canfield men trying to get Willie to step outside while he tries desperately not to be caught outdoors — all under the nose of the blissfully ignorant Virginia, who has no idea who her gentleman friend is.

Fans of Keaton’s great train classic The General will be struck by Keaton’s early, adroit use of a much earlier period steam engine. This model runs on flexible tracks that look as if they were simply unspooled across the landscape, and the engine itself moves no faster than a horse-drawn buggy, allowing Willie’s dog to trot along under the cars for the duration of the trip (much like the Ingalls’s dog Jack trotting under the family wagon in the Little House books).

Keaton was given to grand comic gestures, a flair seen in a spectacular throwaway gag in which a demolished dam and a huge cascade of water inadvertently provides momentary cover for Keaton’s hapless hero. But the film’s most memorable moment is unarguably a breathtaking climactic stunt on the cusp of a waterfall.