The Frozen North (1922) User Reviews

Buster Keaton is the Villain

[SendiTolver · 7/10 · 26 September 2018]

'The Frozen North' is far from being Buster Keaton's best works in the short film, but it is one of his most interesting ones. This is the only time when Buster Keaton plays a villain in his own movie. Although 'The Frozen North' parodies westerns and melodramas of that era (especially those of William S. Hart), the bad guy is the bad guy. The film includes some very genius little gags and some quite surreal ones (in the opening scene where Buster Keaton exits the subway station in the middle of the North Pole).

Although not the favorite one of most of the Buster Keaton's fans 'The Frozen North' is interesting (and way different) work of great comedic genius.

One Odd Buster Keaton Film

[SenjoorMutt · 6/10 · 7 December 2015]

Though this film includes some nice gags and cartoonish action like all the rest Buster Keaton's films, but 'The Frozen North' is more notable for Buster playing a bad guy. At the beginning of the movie we see Buster emerge from Subay Exit in the middle of the snowy fields of Alaska. Then he proceeds to rob a gambling house, shooting a couple because he mistakes the woman to be his wife, and pursues to chase the beautiful married woman next door.

'The Frozen North' was meant to be mockery of western of that era, especially those of William S. Hart, very popular movie star who didn't like Keaton's take of his characters. Keaton also briefly parodies Erich von Stroheim's womanizing character from 'Foolish Wives'.

As this film is not the funniest or best work of Keaton, it's still fun enough to see. Especially if you are early silent cinema aficionado.

a very cruel and atypical Keaton short

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 28 April 2006]

This is a rather disturbing film in many ways. Usually Buster Keaton (and other comics of the age) played likable people or at worst, tricksters. However, I knew "this wasn't your grandpa's Keaton film" right at the beginning. That's because Buster tries robbing everyone in a saloon. Then, moments later he comes home and sees his wife with another man and murders them both! Then, he realizes it's the wrong house and walks away with little apparent remorse! Huh?!?!? Well, it continues along a similar vein, as Buster is just a jerk--trying to steal another man's woman, hurt people for no apparent reason, etc. By then, I thought the only way this movie could be explained was if it all turned out to be a dream (and I HATE this sort of resolution). Well, at the end, that's what it turned out to be! A truly unusual and not particularly nice Keaton vehicle--funny of course, but too cruel to allow it to be better.

One for silent movie buffs

[Damfino1895 · 8 January 2002]

I like this movie, even if it isn't one of his best. We liked 'Bad' Buster simply because it went against the grain. It has lots of clever ideas and tons of references to the movies of the day, the scene where a tear trickles melodramatically down his cheek is a dig at William S Hart,a western actor who always seemed to have a scene where he cried, Hart didn't find the joke funny even if the audiences of the day did. If you are into silent movies then this film will hit it's mark, but, it's enjoyable anyway.

Badman Keaton is only a nightmare

[weezeralfalfa · 7/10 · 19 September 2018]

It's not until the last minute that we find out that this misadventure in the frozen north is but a nightmare. How else could you explain Keaton emerging from a subway station in the frozen North? Also, this conveniently absolves Keaton's character from being a truly evil man.........Incidentally, the large poster that Keaton converts into his partner in crime is an advertisement for Bull's Eye ammunition, not a wanted poster, as sometimes claimed. It would have to be made of cardboard, not paper, to stand up outside the saloon window. As expected, his poster partner only fooled them so long, as it wasn't animated. He gave back the money, and was booted out the window........Keaton would soon become a murderer, as he goes to his cabin and finds his wife kissing a man, the faces turned away from him. Unusually, Keaton's face shows real anger. He shoots the pair dead, then discovers that it wasn't his wife, as he was in the wrong house! He then went home. His wife wanted to kiss him, but he rebuffed her, and she was very sad. Then, he sees a comely lass out the window. He puts on his finest clothes, and calls on her. She's alone, but her husband soon returns, and we have a confrontation. Keaton actually snarls at him, before the husband and wife leave on a sleigh. They will meet again at the end, when the spouses are again inside their cabin. Keaton sneaks in, but before he has a chance to initiate a confrontation, a woman(presumably, his wife) shoots him from the window. It appears to be a mortal wound, but Keaton musters enough energy to get out his gun, and is about to shoot the husband, when he wakes up.........Keaton also has some adventures traveling around on various conveyances, including a deluxe dog sled that has a windshield and a radiator in the front. The only trouble is it's too heavy for the sorry-looking dogs to pull......... When a man comes along on a ski version of a Harley, Keaton takes the propeller off and turns it around, making the skimobile go backwards into a lake. Yes, he's a bad man!....... Keaton also has some adventures ice fishing with his buddy Joe Roberts.

Badman Keaton

[TheLittleSongbird · 6/10 · 4 August 2020]

For a while have gotten a lot of enjoyment out of the great Buster Keaton's short films, while tending to prefer marginally the best of his feature films. Overall quality-wise they are inconsistent, but they are a lot of fun to watch and a fair share of them are brilliant. A big part of their appeal is Keaton himself, as well as those jaw dropping stunts which he did all by himself(!), who isn't known as an icon in comedy and film for nothing, being very funny and being incomparable when it comes to deadpan.

'The Frozen North' is interesting for being one of Keaton's more surreal efforts and for Keaton being against type. It is also one his darker short, and overall, films too, and while that is interesting in itself to me that change of pace didn't quite connect with me somehow and could have been executed better. That does not mean that 'The Frozen North' is bad. It absolutely is not, personally don't consider any of Keaton's silents bad and really like to love all of Keaton's silent performances. He has done better, funnier and more daring films that's all.

Of course there are a lot of good things. The look of 'The Frozen North' is stark but never cheap and had a good deal of atmosphere. Keaton is terrific with great comic timing and his bad side has a good deal of menace. His deadpan as usual is expressive and nuanced and his execution of the bold physical comedy never ceases to amaze. Joe Roberts works very well with him.

Moreover, there are plenty of very funny moments, there are flashes of a good natured touch, the referencing is affectionate and will make one interested in seeing what is being referenced and parodied and the parodying is very clever and entertainingly melodramatic as ought. The surrealism is wonderfully weird too.

For all those good things, 'The Frozen North' felt uneven. The story seemed rather fragmented and like the film was left incomplete or with intended content being left out. This does affect the pace, which can be choppy.

Do understand completely where those that weren't all that enamoured with 'The Frozen North' are coming from finding it for their tastes mean-spirited. Even for the concept, some of it did seem on the cruel side and went against what we love about Keaton and what makes his films so appealing. Count me in as another person that doesn't like the type of ending adopted here, it felt rushed and abrupt and also like it was decided at last minutes.

So all in all, decent but uneven and an interesting but not successful enough attempt at trying something different. Nice try though. 6/10

Dude's a genius!

[adamjohns-42575 · 6/10 · 3 August 2023]

The Frozen North (1922) -

This simple and inoffensive film was mostly brought to life by that expressive face of Buster Keaton's.

I'm still gutted that I'm only just now finding out how brilliant he was. I really must do more to see the rest of his works, because they really are a joy that everyone should have in their lives.

'The Frozen North' was only a short film, but it contained such fun and easy viewing that it felt like it was a lot longer.

Buster didn't play his more traditional nice guy in a bad situation here, but more of a rogue who was too big for his snow shoes/guitars.

Either way he showed his genius and the supporting cast did just that with their straight played performances that balanced out his shenanigans.

It obviously can't score as high as 'Go West' (1925), because there was so much more to see in that feature length effort, but a longer version of this story would probably have been just as successful as far as I would have been concerned.

625.81/1000.

Darker and Drier

[Polaris_DiB · 9/10 · 6 February 2006]

I saw the Kino Video transfer of this which came with an introduction that explained that it was incomplete and that most of it is pretty much destroyed. So I didn't really get the whole short, but what I did get I shall comment on.

The plot, as it were, is hard to connect because of the missing pieces, but in general it involves Keaton as a very different character than most of his films: this time, as a daringly evil but tragically incompetent ... somebody... that goes around shooting people and chasing women when he's not falling through snow and into frozen lakes. It's quite darker and drier than most of his stuff, as the concrete-faced Keaton goes along shooting and killing person after person... definitely not his usual stuff.

I liked the parodies and take-offs he did in this. It was quite funny, the little pokes at melodrama from Hart's work and so on. However, I'd still like to see a complete copy so that I could get an idea on how this movie flows.

--PolarisDiB

Angry Keaton Lets Out Some Frustration

[drqshadow-reviews · 4/10 · 29 September 2021]

Buster Keaton tackles the rare villainous role, a thoroughly rotten outlaw, in this strange, ice-crusted sorta-western. After emerging from "the end of the subway line" in the frosty tundra of deep Alaska, Keaton gets right to robbing casinos, firing guns at the backs of strangers and making passes at a neighbor's wife... all crimes of convenience that don't go according to plan, but they're still pretty dark acts. There's barely any narrative to speak of, either, just a few clips of Keaton running through the snow to bridge the divergent scenes and a bland, overused climactic jape.

The Frozen North is disorganized to the max; scattered and unfocused like a grab bag of unrefined ideas. Perhaps understandably so, as Keaton's head wasn't really in the game during production. At the time, his friend and former partner, Fatty Arbuckle, was being judged in the press and blacklisted ahead of a much-publicized manslaughter trial and Buster took the about-face of many industry acquaintances very personally. That almost assuredly led to the film's angrier tone and less-focused production. The Frozen North is also, evidently, loaded with topical humor that's utterly lost on most sets of modern eyes, including my own. The despicable cowboy Keaton plays, a selfish scoundrel, was understood at the time as a send-up of William S. Hart, star of many such pictures, who was a vocal critic of Arbuckle's despite never crossing his path. In that context, the film takes on a new light. I'd still consider it one of Buster's worst, both for the structural disarray and the hopelessly dour spirit, but at least I can understand his reasoning.

Buster plays the baddie

[Igenlode Wordsmith · 9/10 · 6 March 2006]

I seem to have enjoyed this film a great deal more than most of the other reviewers; perhaps context helps. In the darkness of a warm cinema on a bright frosty afternoon, surrounded by laughter from a full house of hundreds of people, from those too old to have hair to those too young to read, watching a pristine print on the big screen to the musical improvisation of one of the top silent film accompanists in the country, I found it absolutely hilarious, and Buster himself is obviously having a ball acting the villain for a change. All he lacks is a pair of mustachios to twirl.

You don't need to be familiar with specific target material to get the spoof -- at least, I wasn't. All you need is a passing acquaintance with the conventions of melodrama's modern descendant, the great British pantomime. Buster's incompetent dedication to his own ends and his domineering over his clumsy but loyal minion could be drawn straight from the seasonal boards of "Puss in Boots" or "Dick Whittington", as King Rat boasts and cowers; and his rolling tears and avid seduction wouldn't disgrace the false eyelashes of a Dame. Plus it's almost worth the price of admission alone to watch him launch a copybook Evil Snarl up at the outraged husband...

The setting of "The Frozen North" provides an almost inexhaustible series of sight gags, juxtaposing the icy surroundings with incongruous everyday objects -- the snow-carpet-beater in the igloo, the policeman's ski-mounted Harley-Davidson -- as well as the obvious slapstick opportunities afforded by deep snowdrifts, falls from the roof and frozen lakes. But there's plenty of Keaton's own unmistakable brand of surreal logic here as well, from the opening hold-up to the final shoot-out and its twist. Provided you're not completely affronted by the concept of watching Buster throw himself with zest into the role of "Curses! Foiled again" -- for back in 1922 he wasn't exclusively identified with the part of the underdog who wins through -- and provided you do realise that you're *supposed* to laugh at overacting, the film is brimful with hilarity.

Not what would later be thought of as typical for Buster Keaton, perhaps -- but nonetheless this picture bears the undeniable hallmarks of his authorship all over it, and is frequently extremely funny.

Stoneface in the snow

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 30 July 2015]

This is a black-and-white silent short film that runs for roughly 17 minutes and was made over 90 years ago. The star here is Buster Keaton. He wrote, directed and starred in this one. Same can be said for Edward F. Cline, although at least his contribution in terms of acting was smaller than Keaton's. The two made really many films together. Keaton plays a villain this time, not too common for him although you would guess that his ice-cold face expression should work with that. However, for me personally, it was just too difficult to realistically appreciate him and take him seriously as a bad guy. Of course, as always with Keaton, he is even clumsier than he is bad here and there are all the jokes and slapstick you could think of for a snow landscape. He must have a deal with the devil looking at how fast he got out of that hole in the frozen lake. Anyway, I don't believe this is among Keaton's best. not recommended.

A short but brilliant comedy

[Woof-11 · 8 October 1999]

Well, this film actually is funnier than most remember. In fact, most don't remember it. It's only about twenty minutes long, and never made it all that big. Yes, it's the one film where Keaton doesn't play someone you can instantly sympathise with. He's mean in parts, but with good reason (you find out at the end). It hops randomly from image to image, with absolutely nothing tying them together. The next paragraph just has some descriptions of scenes from the film - I've marked them as spoilers anyway, since the comedy is best seen fresh.



*** SPOILERS ***

Every scene has comic genius plastered all over it. Takeoffs of westerns, of ads, of film conventions, all done with an utterly surreal edge. There's a dogsled shaped like a 20s motor car, pulled by a team of dachshunds, greyhounds and bassets. The opening shot is him walking out of a subway entrance onto a desolate snow plain. He holds up a pub using a cardboard cutout of a gunman gained from a billboard poster. Sure, he's not our lovable Buster Keaton, but Keaton always had a mean streak in him (remember him tossing his leading lady into the train in The General, or trying to throttle her before hugging her?). In short, it's an anarchic romp that's well worth watching. It's all tied together in the end, and in the meantime you can just entertain yourself by watching the antics. Don't try to figure out what's going on. Just watch and accept. Not typical Keaton, but terribly enjoyable anyway.

Surrealist Keaton

[jtyroler · 9/10 · 12 May 2008]

I can imagine André Breton, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, Man Ray, Luis Buñuel, and Salvador Dali enjoying this Keaton short. A subway station in the frozen north, an attempted holdup of a gambling hall (a gag that only makes sense in the context of a film), the radiator of a sled overheating, golf clubs, a keep off the grass sign sticking up through the snow, etc.

The surrealist movement was influenced by the theories of Sigmund Freud and free association and his interpretation of dreams. Considering that The Surrealist Manifesto wasn't written until 1924, so it's very possible that this could have influenced the European surrealists.

I realize that this may seem like a lot of extra information, but having some knowledge of surrealism helps make this Keaton short more understandable and enjoyable. Even though this might seem disjointed, there is some logic behind all of this. If you don't believe me, just ask your analyst...

Buster the Desperado

[richardchatten · 9/10 · 4 August 2022]

The humour is uncharacteristically cynical for Keaton who cuts a wholly incongruous figure from the moment he emerges from a subway in the middle of Alaska.

A modern audience is unlikely to recognise his parodies of William S. Hart and Erich von Stroheim, but with London currently gasping through a heatwave all that snow sure looks good.

Somewhat Odd Short, But Contains Some Very Good Gags

[Snow Leopard · 4 October 2001]

This is a somewhat odd Keaton short, and not all of it works that well, but it does contain some good material. It was written as a parody of some contemporary melodramas, and as such there are a lot of things that Buster's character does that would make more sense and/or would be funnier to someone familiar with the films that he was parodying. Nevertheless, it has some fine gags, with most of the best ones dealing with deliberate incongruities in the "Frozen North" setting. Keaton's imagination and creativity are evident in a lot of the details, even if the overall result is more uneven than usual.

Wonderful early Keaton

[suttonstreet-fb · 9/10 · 16 December 2011]

This is a very odd movie: brilliant, surreal and idiotic all at the same time. Buster emerges from the subway into a frozen wasteland, tries to rob a saloon, and then shoots the wrong wife. He "hears" the women next door sweeping snow and decides to accost her, once assured the husband is out of sight. Does she loath him, or is oddly attracted to this man who, in the right light, appears almost aristocratic? The scene of Buster appreciating fine music is worth the price of admission. And who is the woman who shoots him? This has remained a mystery for 90 years, but maybe you will be the one to figure it out. Watch this movie.

Keaton in a different light

[gbill-74877 · 8/10 · 7 March 2023]

It was interesting to see Buster Keaton play against type here as the bad guy who shows up fresh out of the last subway stop near the North Pole. The Great Stone face sheds a glycerin tear in one scene and scowls in another, not something you of see out of him often, and we also see him briefly in a European officer's uniform, putting on sinister airs. Perhaps most upsetting to modern fans, we see him cruel to his wife and attempt to make off with another man's wife. The backstory to the script explains it though: Keaton's old pal Fatty Arbuckle sought to parody William S. Hart for the Hart's unfounded public comments about him during the Virginia Rappe scandal, and that's where this less than pleasant screen character comes from.

There are a few clever little bits here, such as when Buster shoots what he thinks is his cheating wife and the man she's kissing, only to declare "I've made a mistake...this isn't my house or my wife," which I chuckled over. Talk about pitch black comedy. There are also various Arctic (actually Truckee, California) send-ups here, such as a guy using a carpet sweeper inside an igloo, a tug of war with adjacent ice fishing lines, Buster using two guitars for snowshoes, and comical dog sleds and taxis. Keaton pretending to be a snowman while being chased was also a highlight, and I liked the ending too, which served as a nice little reminder that this performance was not the "real" Buster we know and love. It's probably less effective a century later because the satire of Hart is no longer so obvious and because we like Buster as a nice guy, but there are still lots of gags here, and it was fascinating to see him in a different light, sticking up for his friend Arbuckle.

Keaton Dreaming Movies

[Cineanalyst · 17 October 2005]

My favorite Buster Keaton two-reelers are the explicitly self-referential ones, which is this film and "The Playhouse" (in addition to the one or two he made with "Fatty" Arbuckle). They may not be his funniest, per se, but I think they are his cleverest. As with "Sherlock, Jr."--the early masterpiece of cinematic reflexivity--the incongruous imagery in "The Frozen North" is explained as being a dream, but that's not explained until the end, unlike the former, which is framed by "reality". ("The Frozen North" is apparently missing some footage, though, so my comments only apply to what I've seen.) "The Playhouse", as well, is explained more quickly as a dream. Keaton often employed the dream explanation as a means of not allowing narratives to seem too ridiculous or implausible, but with such films as "The Frozen North", they take on a new purpose of exploring the similarities and intersections of the two experiences of dreams and movies.

Keaton begins with a spoof on William S. Hart's Westerns--playing the bad man, without the good man that Hart inevitably always became in his melodramas. Some humorous black comedy follows. And then, Keaton drops his cowboy outfit for a snazzy white suite and goes after another man's wife, a la Erich von Stroheim's incarnations, with a more obvious reference later to "Foolish Wives". Many of the gags in between don't work, but the ones that do, especially because of their reliance upon other movies, or in their intentional incongruities, are hilarious. Those who don't prefer parody as much, or aren't familiar with the concurrent films of Keaton's times might not enjoy them as much, though.

Reportedly, there may also have been more to the unflattering Hart parody. When Arbuckle was accused and eventually tried thrice for murder and rape before being declared not guilty and receiving an apology from the jury, Hart is said to have piled in on the muckraking. Some even say Arbuckle, now persona non grata in Hollywood, wrote this film's premise for his friend Keaton.

Regardless, others have panned Keaton's lack of a consistent character in the short and the loss of Keaton's typical and morally agreeable comedic persona. These aren't actual errors in the film, as they're explained by it being all a dream, and the guy dreaming it very well could be a morally upstanding fellow; they're personal qualms, which are, of course, fine. If, however, one appreciates "The Frozen North" as a parody and the incongruous plot as representing a dreamlike flow then you might, like me, find this film a highly enjoyable experience.

The darkest of Keaton's comedies

[MissSimonetta · 9/10 · 8 August 2019]

If you want to know how weird THE FROZEN NORTH is, just know Buster Keaton plays a villain in this who thieves, murders, bullies, and possibly even commits rape-- wow. A spoof on William S. Hart and Erich von Stroheim, THE FROZEN NORTH stands unique among Keaton's films. While he was no stranger to surreal flourishes and dark comedy, this one pushes it past his usual limits. While some knowledge of the films he's parodying would enrich one's enjoyment of this short, Keaton's dreamlike narrative and stark visuals more than make up for any confusion.

Not your typical Buster

[caspian1978 · 24 September 2004]

For only 17 minutes, The Frozen North is one of Buster Keaton's more interesting comedies. For starters, Keaton is not the hero but the foe of the film. He holds up the local casino, beats up his wife, and then tries to seduce the neighboring wife, all in the first half of the movie. After an off beat chase scene, Buster returns to town to be shot by his wife. Then again, in the last 15 seconds of the movie, we realize that it is all a dream as Keaton is woken up by the janitor at the cinema that the "movie" he was watching is over! It seems that Frozen North was just a few pages of ideas and not a real story. I think the movie stayed that way and never became a script. The story took a back seat to quick comedy routines and the bizarre character that Keaton portrayed. It is said that this was to be a 20 minute short. Some footage of the film was lost over the years. The lost 3 minutes to the movie could have explained Keaton's character better than just having him behave like a brute with a greedy and sexual appetite.

the only mean-spirited movie Keaton ever made

[busterm · 30 October 1998]

I read recently that this was supposed to be a satire of someone else's movies (I can't remember the actor's name that Keaton is satirizing), but even knowing that, it's a shocker. The one thing you can always count on in Keaton's movies is an underlying sweet-naturedness (unlike Chaplin, who expresses a lot of anger in his comedies). I wish he hadn't made it, because by now, the movies he's referring to are forgotten, and we don't get the point. All his other movies are about universal human experiences, and will always be understood by any audience, anywhere.