Margaret Leahy and Buster Keaton in Three Ages.

Three Ages is Buster Keatons first feature length film.  It is also one of the few silent films outside the ones he made with Fatty Arbuckle, in which he has a famous co-star, Wallace Beery.  It is a landmark film in his career, but not actually his best.

This movie tells three love stories at once.  All three star the same actors.  They take place in the Stone Age, the Roman Age, and the (then) Modern Age.  In all three, Keaton and Beery compete for the affection of the same girl.  in the stone age, Keaton rides a dinosaur and plays golf.  In the Roman Age he gets into a chariot race with Beery, with Keaton using a dog sled.  The Modern Age ends with a football game with Beery and Keaton on opposing teams.

Keaton was known for his use of groundbreaking special effects, but here he has a couple of cheesy scenes.  The stop action dinosaur and the stuffed lion are too obvious to even be funny.  The scenes of ancient Rome though are fairly spectacular.  Did they build those huge sets just for this comedy, or were they left over from some other film production?

The gimmick of the three ages is unique but gets tiring very quickly, although the pace gets better as the movie goes on.  The best scene in the Stone Age is when Buster flirts with a huge woman to make his girlfriend jealous.  Although the lion is very fake, Keatons reaction to it is hilarious, as he gives it a manicure. 

In all three ages, the suitors must deal with the girls parents.   In the Roman Age her dad says to Beery, "Thou rankest highest in the Roman army,"  Then to Keaton he says, "And thou art the rankest."  During the Modern Age the girls mother insists on knowing the size of each man's bank account.

Co-directed by Eddie Cline and written with guys who would go on to write more films with him, Three Ages was a learning experience for Keaton, and a sign of greater things to come.

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