Instrumentation
1(=picc).1(=ca).2(I=fl.II=bcl).1 - 1110 -pno(=harmonium) - strings (2.2.2.2.1)
Availability
Full score and parts for hire
Programme Notes
Starring: Buster Keaton, Natalie Talmadge
Director: John G. Blystone
Production company: Metro USA, 1924
Film Print: 35mm tinted print available from Cohen Film Collection (N. America) and Park Circus (Rest of World) (Film Speed: 22 frames per second)
Recorded for Video
Our Hospitality has a more sophisticated plot and greater comic subtlety than many of Keaton's better-known films. It opens with a dramatic prologue showing a 19th-century family feud - and develops into an enchanting comedy-thriller involving truly astonishing stunts. There is a surprising emphasis on period authenticity. The depiction of 19th-century New York City will be hilarious to contemporary inhabitants of the metropolis, and for the long railway journey which forms the centrepiece of the film (and from which a surprising amount of comic mileage is drawn) a precise reproduction of an early locomotive was used. Keaton's wife, Natalie, the sister of the celebrated stars Norma and Constance Talmadge, plays the female lead, his son is the baby and his father plays the engine driver.