1,001 Films: "Seven Chances" (1925)

Seven Chances is hopefully still better known as the Buster Keaton comedy with the landslide and the brick-wielding army of brides than as the film remade by Chris O'Donnell as The Bachelor (which proved but one thing: that, whatever else he is, Chris O'Donnell is no Buster Keaton). This is a brilliantly economical piece of work, establishing in just three shots at the very top of the film the present state of play in the relationship between bashful broker Jimmie Shannon (Keaton) and his beloved: that of a couple slowly going nowhere together, due to his repeated inability to declare his affections. Then the news breaks that Jimmie has until 7pm that night, the night of his 27th birthday, to marry someone in order to inherit the $7m his grandfather has bequeathed him. His beloved, understandably, takes some convincing her man's proposal is driven by more than mere money, leading Buster - with his business partner and grandfather's executor in tow - to propose to "everything in skirts, including a Scotchman": playing a hyper-accelerated form of the numbers game, if you will.

Keaton the director skilfully sets up his hero's capacity for stalling and delay before sending him on a limit-testing race against the clock, coming up first with new ways to have Jimmie rejected (at no point does he use the logical chat-up line "marry me, and I'll make you an instant millionaire"), then further compounding his fear of commitment by giving him one-hundred-plus women to commit to and a thousand conflicting time pieces to work to. Against all this frantic choice and motion, some lovely early linking business with cars and telephones that don't move serves to define Jimmie's pre-existing relationship as one of unwavering (if unspoken) attachment. A couple of blackface gags momentarily spoil the elegance - especially as Keaton throws away a nice minor joke with an actual African-American - but otherwise it's a silent romantic comedy that speaks eloquently, and to some moral purpose, about cherishing the rock-solid and reliable rather than chancing it out in the field. It's here that Keaton - sprinting for his life through sand dunes, barbed wire fences and swarms of killer bees to get back to his girl by the allotted hour - really starts to put the motion in motion pictures.

Seven Chances is available on DVD from Cornerstone Media.