Hard Luck (1921)

US 22m, B&W, Silent
Directors: Buster Keaton, Edward F. Cline; Cast: Buster Keaton, Virginia Fox, Joe Roberts, Bull Montana

Hard Luck has been described as a strangely disjointed film, even for a silent comedy short, which are often just a series of gags strung along the thinnest of plot lines. It is this lack of any continuity, however, which suggests that this may well have been the film maker’s intentions. Perhaps the best evidence of this notion is the wonderfully absurd conclusion which sees Buster dive off a high platform, miss the pool, and re-emerged “a few years later” – dressed in traditional Chinese clothes with a wife and family in tow (Klaus Ming April 2016).