THREE CHEERS
You needn't have seen Griffith's INTOLERANCE to appreciate what Keaton does here. This isn't really a parody of INTOLERANCE. Keaton simply borrowed Griffith's idea of exploring a theme or idea in different historic ages. The theme here is Romantic Love & the three ages are: Stone, Roman & Modern. Keaton's sweetheart through the ages is Margaret Leahy & his rival is Wallace Beery. There are wonderful bits throughout the movie. I especially like his travel by dinosaur, his caveman foot gear (which shows up in every comedy with cave men) & a chariot race that seems a parody of the one in BEN-HUR except this one came first. There is a restaurant scene in the Modern Age in which the Rival goes off to pay the bill & the Sweetheart decides to 'fix her face'. Once, sitting in a movie theatre what Keaton does next caused the woman to my left to laugh so violently I thought I was going to sustain an injury. It's a lovely movie.

Love through the ages
Keaton's first feature-lenght film is a funny revision of three historic periods ( the stone age, the roman empire and the 20th century ) that at time can be seen as a parody of Griffith's " Intolerance ". Keaton combines creatively scenes of the mentioned ages following the same analogical scheme than Griffith's masterpiece, but inversely to " Intolerance " here the misadventures of true love is the leitmotive of all the three " stories " and the emphatic and dramatic look of Griffith changes for Keaton's comic disaffectation . This operation, for other part, can be understand as a symptom of Keaton's care in his purpose to jump into a most ambitious production, since " The three ages " are in fact three shorts, this is, three variations around a same story put in one feature. The movie has ups and downs ( the next would be his first masterpiece " Our hospitality ), but although " The three ages " is far inferior than his later filmworks as director it has many splendid isolated sight-gags as that one with Keaton's driving a Ford that falls into pieces when he tries to cross a pathole ( it's not hard to imagine how Henry Ford received this commentary ) and turns out to be in all of its parts very amusing. Wallace Beery plays the role of Keaton's eternal rival. A Keaton's minor piece, but Keaton's signature is always a guarantee of fine artwork.

This DVD also contains Keaton's shorts: " The goat "( 1920 ), an hilarious slapstick farce with Keaton in the role of a man falsely accused, and " My wife's relations" ( 1920 ), a delicious satire of marriage-life.

Start here or finish here
Whether you're new to the work of Buster Keaton or exploring ways to complete your Keaton library you can't go wrong with this set. It contains his first feature length film as a director (Three Ages) and two shorts films, The Goat and My Wife's Relations. The editors of this set selected a good blend of Keaton themes and approaches to story-telling here. The Goat is the earliest of the set but is in some ways it is the perfect distillation of his character: a drifter, a victim of fate, machine and human will who somehow avoids disaster and even, surprisingly, wins the girl. Buster becomes falsely identified as an escaped criminal, chased continuously by cops, eventually exploiting his predicament by flashing the newspaper containing his mug shot to folks who want to give him a hard time. The climax is a great chase scene involving an elevator and set of stairs as Buster tries to rendezvous with his beloved who happens to be the daughter of the cop who has been pursuing him for most of the film! This film is simply unmatched as a spontaneous sequence of creative visual comedy.

My Wife's Relations (1922) is less satisfying because it strays from the best Keaton formula and degrades into a more purely slapstick genre. It is much more suggestive of the kind of film Buster did with Fatty Arbuckle 3 or 4 years previously; funny, creative, but more primitive and less satisfying to the modern viewer. It contains elements that are untypical of Keaton's character, such as physical violence towards a woman (not that the bully character of Keaton's wife did not deserve such abuse here!)

Finally, Three Ages is pure joyful visual comedy. It is a comic parody of Grittith's Intolerance, where the same theme is explored over three different historical periods. Here is the theme is love (boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy defeats rival and wins girl back) and the three ages are pre-historic, roman and modern (1920s); there are unlimited comic opportunities being explored here, as love and life are compared and contrasted. The energetic, optimistic mood is somewhat uncharacteristic of Keaton's films and more suggestive of Harold Lloyd, as Keaton's character overcomes bully obstacles with almost super-human skill and dexterity. In fact, the football game sequence looks forward to Lloyd's The Freshman, and the rescue of the girl from the polygamist predates Lloyd's Girl Shy. (Both Keaton and Lloyd were approaching their peek creatively during this period, and it's obvious that they played off each other's creative skills.)

By all means, buy this volume, whether alone or as part of the complete set.

Buster - the best there ever was
Keaton's Three Ages is one of his lesser works, but it shows the same attention to detail that would be so praised in his best-known work, The General. Keaton's comedy is so matter-of-fact that whenever he does a gag, it appears to make perfect sense to the viewer. If his Roman character is in a chariot race, and one of the dogs is lame, then of course he will stop, examine the dog, take a spare dog from a box on the back of the chariot, and exchange them!

My Wife's Relations does indeed reflect the tensions occurring in Keaton's married life at that time. He married Natalie Talmadge because she wanted to get married, and Buster seemed a likely prospect (I am quoting from various Keaton biographies here). The fact that he cast Natalie as the leading lady in Our Hospitality does not mean that they were getting along, but that he wanted to placate her. Keaton, who lived uneasily with his wife's relations, made the film as a way of complaining about his in-laws without actually voicing his complaints. The film is a bitingly funny one.

The Goat (in other words, scapegoat) is yet another fantastically funny short in which Keaton is a victim of fate. His sense of comedy was far beyond that of Chaplin or Lloyd, which is why it stands up so well today.

The Bus Man Cometh
This is one of the Bus Man's lesser known, but certainly not lesser works.

Three Ages is a tad jarring at first, because the three tales of romance mix ups criscross between the Flinstonic era (haha), Ancient Rome, and the Roaring 20s. Even if you don't usually like romatic comedy, the Bus man's personality and brilliant comic timing will make you smile and laugh. I'm not really sure if our man is actually being dragged by an elephant in the caveman scenes, but the lion he deals with in the Roman segment is obviously fake. The pre-Lost world animated segments of the Bus man riding the dinosaur is impressing and amusing even for modern audiences.

In either case, while this isn't exactly a knee-slapper, it's certainly an amusing and pleasant way to spend an hour and a half, as well as the shorts.