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Surprisingly incoherent and boring

How sad is this?

Good concept, poorly executed.

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

All of Buster Keaton's silent films had a beauty and a grace to them, but Our Hospitality exemplifies this best. A mini epic, full of beautiful, lush scenery and landscape shots; visually speaking, I consider this to be Keaton's best film. Take the film's finale as an example, as Keaton walks along the edge of a cliff with huge forest backdrops stretching as far as the eye can see or the equally as impressive sequence in which an entire dam is blown up. But the sequence which best showcases this idealised look at 1830's America is the supreme majesty of the steam locomotive sequence; a predecessor to what would come in The General. This is one of the greatest sequences Keaton ever captured on film, with the music score on the Thames Silent's version giving it (as well as the film as a whole), an even greater sense of awe. Filming as well the construction of such large scale props must have been no easy feat. It's a sequence which is beautiful, funny and thrilling at the same time, filled with so many inventive sight gags. When Keaton's top hat doesn't fit on his head in the locomotive carriage, he puts on his iconic pork pie hat; that's more like it! It's a bumpy unstable ride to say the least, and even has a dog chasing it throughout for that extra bit of amusement.The set up of Our Hospitality is the type of melodrama which was rife during the silent period (and what Keaton himself parodied in his short The Frozen North). One family has a feud with another which lasts from one generation to the next, and nobody remembers what caused the feud to begin with ("Men of one family grew up killing men of another for no other reason expect their fathers had done so"). Ah simple but effective naivety; why can't we all just get along? Keaton's birth place is not stated during the film, but it's clearly located in Appalachia, prior to his character being sent to New York for a better upbringing; Keaton the sophisticated New Yorker vs. hillbilly red necks. Yep, we have a movie here ripe with hillbilly stereotypes. On top of tapping into the Appalachian cultural stereotype of feuding families, there are plenty of guns stored in the Canfield house, but when they're not allowed to use them due to their comical dedication to be hospitable, they just ask the townspeople to borrow a gun. Likewise in another scene Keaton sees a husband abusing his wife, steps in and throws the husband aside, yet the wife starts attacking Keaton himself. Keaton then runs away, followed by the husband ordering the wife back into the house. Ah the glorious lack of political correctness.

It's about 1810. The Canfields and the McKays are feuding clans. John McKay is killed and his wife moves with her infant son Willie to NYC to live with her sister. After his mother's death, Willie (Buster Keaton) is raised by his aunt without any knowledge of the feud. He returns to Rockville to reclaim his inheritance. He meets Virginia Canfield (Natalie Talmadge, Buster's real-life wife) on the train. She invites him over as her family keeps trying to kill him.The rickety old train is fascinating and extremely cool. The story is fun. The family trying to kill him is pretty funny especially when he figures it out. Keaton being scared is hilarious. There are some good stunts. There are some that seem much more dangerous than exciting. Then there is the waterfall dumping on him. The rock climbing looks scary especially when they're not on a set. There is a terrific waterfall rescue at the end that is more in line with an expert trapeze act. The movie has some fun and lots of stunts which is the hallmark of Keaton.

This was seen in the annual Kansas Silent Film Festival. It stars Buster Keaton and is a take-off on the famed Hatfield-McCoy feud, with those names altered to "Canfield" & "McKay."The plot has Willie McKay (Keaton) being taken north and raised in NY state after his father is killed in the feud. When he becomes a young adult, he's tricked into returning to inherit his father's estate (unaware that it's practically non-existent) and where he'll inevitably run into the wealthy Canfield family who have the intent to murder him.BUT also on his train journey back is a lovely young lady -- a Canfield as it happens -- who invites Willie to supper in her home with her father and 2 brothers. Because of the customs of Southern hospitality, her father forbids his sons to kill Willie in their home, so they try tricks to get him outside. A very funny movie with many surprises. (Keaton loved trains and had "The Rocket" built especially for this film.)

Buster Keaton's exceptional silent film is not just about a young man who falls for the wrong girl, nor is it just an exercise in the many ways that film can become an art form as well as entertainment, it is in more ways than one a nostalgic look back to a period of history when this country was fiddling with pieces of invention that would soon become many things we take for granted today. The scene where Keaton is riding a pedal-less bicycle shows his great comic sense as well as where the country was in that time. There is also a funny sequence involving a train, which is for the most part, simply some carriages hooked to each other and pulled by a simple wood-burning engine.All these scenes were Keaton's idea, in my opinion, to show the audience how far America had come since those days. The same could also be true in terms of the storyline, which centers around feuding and bitter hatred for no apparent reason. Indeed, one title card reads that in those days, men killed other men simply because they grew up hating that family. Here, Keaton is the rule-breaker, as he is in many of his other films. His romance with the girl is sweet and comical and how he alludes being killed by her feuding father and brothers can be suspenseful but is also funny as well.If you say you aren't a silent film fan, I encourage you to check this one out. The music is intriguing and enjoyable and Keaton is wonderful the whole time all the while showing the possibilities of film that he regrettably never got a hold of.