The Cook and Other Treasures [DVD]

Arbuckle on center stage, with Keaton and Lloyd supporting
This collection marks the release of two films long thought lost by film historians: “The Cook” starring Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and Buster Keaton, and “A Reckless Romeo”, thought by some to be another lost Arbuckle/Keaton film, but in fact featuring only Arbuckle. The prints were discovered in 1998 in unmarked canisters in the Norwegian Film Institute. “Reckless” seems to be complete, but “The Cook” is missing footage at the end, which is a little disappointing to the viewer; still, fans of Keaton are grateful of the discovery of the film.”The Cook” takes place in a cafe, with Arbuckle in the kitchen and Keaton as a waiter. The gags fly at a furious pace, combining Arbuckle’s deft and droll knife-wielding; a “magic urn” that seems to produce just about anything wished for, including coffee, milk, gravy, something that looks like stew, and eventually, Arbuckle’s jacket; and a game of catch with food orders between Fatty and Buster. We’re not talking subtlety here, but the humor emerging from the sheer turmoil is infectious — I would love to see it in a crowded movie house. Both Fatty and Buster add their own version of grace to their physical humor, but Buster especially is, as always, a joy to behold: no one ever has taken a fall with such precision, and Buster takes numerous high-precision falls in this movie. One also appreciates the effort of Al St. John in “The Cook” (as “the toughest guy in the world”) and “Reckless Romeo”; he blends well into Fatty and Buster’s world of chaos as a sort of hybrid between “dumb country rube” and “half-crazed urban punk”.The most famous scene in “The Cook”, parts of which have been repeated over the years by either Fatty or Buster alone, is a middle-eastern veil dance, first performed by Buster, then taken over by Fatty. Buster’s version is all grace and athleticism; its humor is the result of being an almost spot-on perfect imitation of a perfectly executed female veil dance. Fatty’s version, by contrast, is way over-the-top, with kitchen props, a cabbage head representing that of John the Baptist (Fatty imitating Salome here), and a transition into a death-of-Cleopatra scene, with a link of sausages delivering the fatal snake bite.This collection also contains “Number Please”, an entertaining short starring Harold Lloyd. Lloyd’s character and comic techniques offer an interesting contrast to the Arbuckle/Keaton pairing. “Number Please” (1920) lacks the pure Keystone-influenced chaos of the other films in this set, and engages in simple and effective story-telling, with more clear character definition. Like other Lloyd films, it also has a freshness and natural feel to it — one gets a deep sense of the cultural world of 1920 around which Lloyd’s “glasses character” lives. Lloyd also has a physical grace and athleticism that offers an interesting contrast to Keaton and Arbuckle. The only disappointment is that this short is also in “The Slapstick Symposium” collection starring Lloyd, which I also recommend, but I didn’t appreciate having to purchase two copies of the same film.

The Cook
If everybody knew about Roscoe Arbuckle is won’t be so hard to find ’em in the DVD….but I love it no matter what they say…thank you for handling this………..

True treasures
Milestone always puts so much love and care into their silent DVDs, and this one is no exception. ‘The Cook,’ the one missing entry in the Keaton-Arbuckle series, was considered lost for decades, along with the other Arbuckle short presented here, ‘A Reckless Romeo.’ It’s such a miracle they were found and restored; while it’s always exciting when a lost silent resurfaces decades later, sometimes it seems that more attention is paid to long-lost features instead of shorts like these. Unfortunately, as is the case with many silents that were lost and found, this version of ‘The Cook’ is incomplete. There are some sections which are still missing, most regrettably the ending sequence. The viewer has three versions from which to choose–the restored as-complete-as-possible version with music, the Dutch version, and the Norwegian version, the latter two of which this restoration was primarily cobbled together from. These films, though, don’t have any music (which is always a detriment when watching a silent, which relies so much on the right type of music to evoke the mood), and the Dutch version doesn’t have any intertitles.Along with the two (wonderfully funny) Arbuckle shorts, there’s also a Harold Lloyd short, ‘Number, Please?’ It seems kind of wasteful for the disc to only have three shorts on it, and for the Lloyd short to have been previously released on ‘The Harold Lloyd Slapstick Symposium’ (and by now the Lloyd boxed set as well). Why do so many of these DVDs of silent shorts have this overlap, making the consumer get duplicate copies of shorts s/he already owns? Rounding out the disc is a 23-page press kit, which has a lot of great information on the comedians featured, the discovery of the Arbuckle shorts, the restoration process, the institutions which we have to thank for bringing us these long-lost treasures, and a fascinating essay entitled “A Guide to Amusement and Incubation in The Cook and A Reckless Romeo.” I only wish there had been more shorts included.

What would life be without these guys?
Wish they were still around making more movies! Buy all their dvds and you’ll have the best comedies ever made and a lifetime of entertainment you can watch over and over again! Never loses it’s freshness!