- When you sit down to watch an early 1920's silent comedy short about Native Americans, it's really just a question of how awful things are going to get. In the case of Buster Keaton's The Paleface, I can honestly say that things could have been much worse. Sure, it has white actors made up to like Indians, doing fake tribal dances, and trying to take scalps, but at least the film makes its Native American characters the good guys. We're going to put this one in the "win" column, even if winning is sometimes a very relative measure.
- The setup is that a Native American chief (Joe Roberts) declares that his tribe will kill the next white man who enters their village, in retaliation for the murder of their emissary at the hands of a bunch of low-down oil tycoons. Naturally, the next person to enter is a completely clueless butterfly collector (Keaton), who leads the entire tribe on a few ridiculous chases before eventually getting captured. They try to burn him at the stake, but his asbestos-coated BVDs save his life. The tribe is so impressed that they start worshipping this "Little Chief Paleface," who uses his newfound status to impress the only woman in the village (Virginia Fox).
- Like all Buston Keaton features, this one is best evaluated according to its stunts, and there are a few terrific ones. In one case, Keaton is tossed off a cliff and converts his blanket into a parachute on the way down. In another particularly impressive stunt, he has to build a bridge as he crosses it, eventually plummeting into the lake below. My favorite visual gags involve people mounting their horses, with Keaton pointed in the wrong direction and the chief executing a trust fall to get his tribe to lift him up. The film gets in another great joke at the end, when a "Two years later" intertitle isn't nearly enough to interrupt Keaton's triumphant kiss. The Paleface certainly isn't as good as Keaton's best feature-length films, but it's probably a lot better than you would expect.
