The creative failure of two great filmmakers The film Timid Youth (1935) entered the history of cinema due to the fact that it first united two great titans of a little cinema - director Mac Sennet and actor Buster Keaton. If Keaton movie lovers know from silent films, then Mac Sennett is less known in Russia, although in fact he is the man who invented and created silent comedies as we know them. Without Sennett, with his love of eccentricity (everyone falls, chases each other, throws cakes in the face, etc.) there would be no Charlie Chaplin, who started his career in his studio.
In the 1910s and 1920s, Sennett was one of the innovators of a bit of cinema, but in 1935 his career was moving towards a sunset. A couple of years earlier, he had to close his legendary studio, which had existed since 1912. And Timid Boy was one of his last films. Buster Keaton was also having a tough time at the time. This “timid young man” was already 40 years old, his career was derailed, Educational Pictures signed him to a contract for 10 sound shorts, but on a very modest budget. The actor suffered from family problems and alcoholism, it is no coincidence that most convincingly in the film he plays a dead drunken hero who on the eve of courage offered to marry a certain cunning lady who is now chasing him and trying to drag him to the church for a wedding.
Trying to escape from her in the mountains by car, he meets the cute heroine Lona Andre, who asks her for a ride. On a narrow mountain road, they encounter a gloomy car rogue (played by big boy Tyney Stanford, repeatedly filmed by Charlie Chaplin), whose car is thrown off the slope. And now the hero of Baston and his new friend, who are hiding in the woods, are chased by both the bride and the evil motorist.
The story sounds better than the movie. Jokes are not funny, the characters overplay and a lot of crooked (Keaton does it a little less, but he has such a tired look, as if he was from a terrible hangover). Only two moderately funny scenes are remembered (how Keaton’s hero fishes on jumping Mexican beans and how the loving Tiny Stanford kisses Keaton in a camping tent so much, confused in the dark with the sexy Lona Andre, that he is forced to rinse his mouth with gasoline!).
Overall, it's one of Keaton's worst films (soon after filming, alcoholism drove him to the hospital) and clearly not Mac Sennett's best. Oh, if they had decided to cooperate 10-15 years earlier!