Seven Chances

One of Buster Keaton's silent comedies. Jimmie and his partner are on the edge of bankruptcy. Then a lawyer arrives: his grandfather has left him seven million dollars. The condition is that he must be married by seven o'clock that evening to inherit. Jimmie goes first to the girl he loves and makes the proposal so clumsily that she refuses. Then he proposes to everyone he knows at the club; all of them turn him down. His partner finds a solution: he places an advertisement in the paper. That afternoon hundreds of women in wedding dresses gather at the church. The most famous section is the escape. Fleeing the crowd, Jimmie runs out of the city, climbs a hill, and on the way down rocks start rolling. That sequence came about by accident: a few stones rolled during the shoot, the preview audience laughed, and Keaton went back and reshot it with hundreds of fake boulders. Buster Keaton directed and stars. Some jokes in the first section belong to their period and are considered offensive now. Among the best of its kind for anyone who likes silent comedy and physical humour. It runs under sixty minutes and the last twenty are pure chase.