Synopsis
The Boat (1921) is a silent short comedy you can watch online on iFILM. Just over twenty minutes of pure visual mayhem from Buster Keaton, one of the defining clowns of the silent era.
Keaton plays a hapless amateur shipwright who has built a vessel in his basement and christened it the Damfino. One problem: the boat won't fit through the doorway, and hauling it out brings half the house down with it. Then comes the launch — the little craft sinks the instant it hits the water — followed by a long, doomed struggle as he and his family fight the sea. Every gag is engineered like clockwork; Keaton designed the stunts and took the falls himself, no doubles and barely a cut to hide the seams.
Co-directed with Edward Cline, the short is a textbook example of how Keaton turned domestic disaster into precision slapstick delivered with a stone face. It's an ideal entry point into his early work for anyone curious where a century of physical comedy got its start. Stream The Boat (1921) online on iFILM.
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