The Boat

The Boat (1921)

Moored for one week

A boat builder and his family attempt to set sail in his handmade boat, 'The Damfino'.

Date of release
1921-11-10
TMDB
6.5 / 10 (130)
Runtime
23m
Genres
Comedy
Director
Buster Keaton, Edward F. Cline

Casting

Interesting facts

The Boat is a 1921 American two-reel silent comedy film written and directed by, and starring Buster Keaton. Contemporary reviews consider it one of his best shorts, along with One Week (1920), The Playhouse (1921) and Cops (1922). It is presently in the public domain. The International Buster Keaton Society takes its name, The Damfinos, from the name of the film's boat.

Production

Neibur and Niemi consider The Boat the third installment in a trilogy of films about a young married couple, beginning with The Scarecrow (1920) and continuing with One Week (1920). They also note the parallelism between the ending of One Week, in which the couple's home is destroyed by a train, and the beginning of The Boat, in which their house is destroyed by the boat.

The boat launch, in which the vessel slides out of the launching ramp and sinks straight into the water, took three days to film. Technical director Fred Gabourie had two 35 ft (11 m) boats built for the production—one to float and one to sink. However, neither vessel performed its function.

Keaton and Gabourie also conceived the design of the boat's collapsible funnels, mast, and rigging which enable it to pass under bridges, in another inventive sight gag.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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