A Shockingly Insightful Film (The Electric House a Buster Keaton Film)

            In Buster Keaton’s film, The Electric House, the director effectively uses a lot of filming techniques that a fairly mature for his time of filmmaking.  The title scenes for instance are extremely effective in clarifying the story but not being exceedingly prevalent to the point of distraction.  The film itself seems to be a comment on the needs of the people in his time to get what is new and be the first to do so.  This is a need fairly typical today as well, making the film applicable across generations. 

It is clearly a comedic horror in that there is a fair amount of slapstick comedy with the hauntings and so fourth, along with the truth that the haunting was simply a man messing with the wiring out of sight.  The fact that the man is out of sight for everyone in the film but for us it is easy to see who is pulling the strings, an example of dramatic irony not uncommon in earlier stories and theater of the time.  This comedy, as with any good comedy, is used to point out and make fun of society at large. 

One area specifically made fun of is the laziness of the American people and their need for products to allow them to sloth in peace.  This can be seen in the various gadgets made for the house such as the escalator, the train food server and the dishwasher.  The replacement of various tasks once held by the help also conveys the fear of many Americans at the time; that the industrialization and furthering of technology would eventually render manual labor jobs obsolete. With this advancement the declination of jobs readily available to the American populous would render many people unemployed and homeless.

 This comedy in the film represents a real life horror for the American people possibly contributing to the eeriness of the film.  As eeriness comes from what we fear subconsciously being laid out in front of us.  Or these gadgets are cumulatively just a good excuse to have a train do some tricks for us as with the “Cinema of Attractions” idea posed by Tom Gunning.

In the opening of the film the job is mistakenly given to the wrong person due to diplomas being mixed up before the employer or employees know what has happened.  This places our main character in the house of someone with a job they aren’t the least bit qualified to have.  Taking this small aspect of the film, one could say that the purpose of this part is meant to speak to the meaninglessness of an academic education.  The man is not qualified in the least, yet he creates this world of convenience for this man that’s only malfunction if a man messing with the wiring.

The fact that these various inventions are so easily made into a dangerous world of terror expresses a fear that with the over simplification of activities comes a dichotomous over complication in which the owners of this fantastic home are worse off than their assumedly less advanced neighbors.  Yet another fear of technology is being conveyed in this fairly spoof-like macabre film. 

It was typical in the times of early horror cinema to leave the viewer in a content place at the end of the film.  This type of cozy feeling is easily taken care of by the discovery that there was never an actual haunting.  A custom not particularly popular once sequels to horror films become more popular, as there is a need to have an uneasy cliff hanger for the sequel to pull up from.

In regards to editing, I particularly liked the use of match on action shots specifically regarding the escalator malfunctions.  Whomever the unlucky soul may be that finds them selves on the escalator during its malfunction is shown flying out of the window from the interior, then immediately coming out from an outside perspective.  This technique doesn’t feel noticeable in films today as it is in almost everything.  Having grown up with only films that understand and utilize this technique it is difficult to appreciate to the fullest extent the revolutionality of this editing technique.

For these various reasons I like this film quite a lot.  The film is based upon simple concepts and doesn’t use excessively difficult forms of filming or editing but accomplishes the same feelings one would see in many of the films today.  The techniques that the film does use are simple enough to understand while complicated enough for a satisfying read into the film’s intentions.  The story says enough about modern culture at the time while being vague enough to apply across generations.  And it uses sophisticated techniques to create eeriness while maintaining a light comical atmosphere.