Seven Chances (1925)

(On Cable TV, August 2019) There is definitely a slow-burn quality to Buster Keaton’s Seven Chances, as the film shakes itself from a melodramatic first act (in which a young man must find a bride before the end of the day) all the way to an escalating chase sequence in which Keaton flees before hundreds of women in wedding gown, then a full-blown rock avalanche. The progression wasn’t in the early plans for the film—it’s at the audience preview stage that Keaton understood how to cap his film with its wild climax and went back to shooting in order to complete the film. Still, the result works. From the finer small-scale comic work of its first act, Seven Chances gradually works itself into more ludicrous sight gags, and then one of the great sequences of Keaton’s films in time for the finale. No, it’s not quite as inventive as Sherlock Jr., as demented as Steamboat Bill, Jr. or as finely controlled as The General, but it makes for a good second-tier Keaton feature, and those remain well worth seeing.