One Week (Keaton, Cline, 1920) #DTC 636

A futile attempt to build a do-it-yourself house goes completely off the tracks, when some of the plans are held the wrong way.

I do often favor Keaton's films over Chaplin's from that time. Although Chaplin has developed his tramp character way more thoroughly than any of Keaton's figures I feel that the variety of hapless characters in Keaton's films is much bigger. While all of Chaplin's films share the same character, in Keaton's films all they do is share a certain characteristic determination, combined with a stroke of luck and complete and utter clueless behavior.

Although this film has a comparatively weak storyline, there are still many great ideas to marvel at. The poor husband comes up with an extremely creative though useless ideas to solve the many problems he faces during the construction of the house. Biggest laugh is the actual house, "freely deconstructed" and nevertheless the couple decides to live in it - and pretending that everything is normal, even organizing a housewarming.

Many of the smaller comic moments still work fantastically well.

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