Three Ages

Three Ages (1923) is a Buster Keaton silent comedy you can watch online on iFILM. It marks Keaton's first feature as a director, made alongside Edward F. Cline, and it works as a cheeky send-up of Griffith's solemn epic Intolerance, which famously cut between several historical periods at once.

The same love triangle plays out three times — in the Stone Age, in ancient Rome, and in Keaton's own Roaring Twenties. In each era his hero squares off against a hulking rival, played by Wallace Beery, for the same girl. The Stone Age gives us dinosaurs, a turtle used as a ouija board and golf swung with boulders; Rome brings a chariot race pulled by dogs; the modern segment hands him a flimsy car that falls apart beneath him.

The triptych structure was a safety net: if the feature flopped, the studio could chop it into three shorts. It never came to that. A century on, the stone-faced timing and the precise physics of every gag still land exactly as they did on opening night. Essential viewing for anyone who loves silent comedy and wants to trace where a whole century of physical humor began. Stream Three Ages (1923) online on iFILM.