Dansite Reading Journal

I picture Buster Keaton’s entrance into history as being something akin to the no-nonsense opening of The High Sign. This shaggy, mildly absurdist two-reel comedy would be the first film made by the Buster Keaton Studio (though he chose to hold its release until the following year, deeming his second independent short, the now-venerated One Week, to be a more auspicious debut). After that jauntily existential opening title, a train hurtles across the frame from left to right—even as early as 1920, that direction of onscreen movement was shorthand for a vehicle that was outward bound, “on its way”—as our hero is flung from an open car by an unseen assailant. Has he failed to produce a ticket? Displeased a traveling companion? No matter. Scrambling to his feet and adjusting his flat hat, he sets off, luggage-less but resolute, to find his way in the dusty American railroad town into which he seems to have been chucked.