Summary
A slapstick odyssey through the fluorescent underbelly of commerce, Keep Moving choreographs humiliation like a demented ballet: Musty—lanky, moon-faced, perpetually damp with flop-sweat—steps behind a grocery’s warped counter, only to discover the cosmos itself is a stingy customer. A haut-couture matron, her hat a vineyard of celluloid grapes, demands an inventory tour, then purchases a nickel cracker—an act of fiscal sadism. Musty, wounded, gnaws her artificial fruit; she retaliates with a fusillade of apples, the produce detonating against his cheekbones like pastel cannon-fire. The film then pirouettes through a parade of grotesques: a delicate gentleman purchasing cerulean yarn, a cowboy-bandit who pays five cents for half the store’s soul, a drummer whose sample crackers become shrapnel. Each transaction mutates into micro-war, the cash register a battlefield trophy. Musty’s revenge stratagems—firecrackers, milk-filled derbies, Tabasco chugged as if it were communion wine—ricochet back with karmic glee until ceiling, job, and dignity collapse in unison. Shorn of employment, he drifts into a barber’s chair where hair-restorer replaces aftershave, birthing a fuzz-monstrosity that gasoline and a rogue saloon flame promptly incinerate, his chin igniting like a votive candle. The final image: Musty, beardless, singed, yet ambulatory, trudging into a horizon that refuses to pay retail for his suffering.
Synopsis
Musty gets a job in a grocery store. A female customer makes him show her everything in the place, then buys a five-cent package of crackers. For revenge, Musty eats the artificial grapes on her hat. She catches him at it, throws a basket of apples in his face and leaves. Then a sissy-boy buys a ball of yarn for his knitting, and Musty, disgusted at the customer's effeminate qualities, puts a lit firecracker in the package, with startling results. He meets his match when a cowboy-desperado enters and forces him to give up half the contents of the store for five cents. Soon a drummer happens along. Musty advises the proprietor of the store not to buy from him. This awakens the drummer's ire and he throws a handful of crumpled crackers at Musty's face. Musty, however, has not been idle, and when the drummer puts on his hat to leave, he finds that Musty has filled it with milk. After the drummer's departure, Musty decides to have lunch. By mistake he fills his stomach with Tabasco sauce. Naturally he craves water. In trying to get a sprinkling can which is suspended from the ceiling, he pulls down ceiling and all and is consequently discharged. Leaving the grocery store, Musty goes to a barber shop for a shave where he is attended by the unconversational barber, who wears a gag for the protection of his patrons. Musty gets the shave, but the barber puts hair-restorer on his face instead of toilet water. When the barber learns that Musty has no money to pay for his services, an altercation ensues, during which the barber is arrested and Musty escapes. Musty next visits a thirst emporium. The proprietor chases a rough customer into the street, and Musty takes charge of the bar and free lunch counter. His attempts at serving free soup to a tough customer are disastrous, and he receives considerable rough handling. During his activities in the saloon he gets his beard saturated with gasoline, and when he gets too near the fire over which the free lunch is steaming an explosion occurs which causes him considerable discomfort, but which also rids him of the troublesome whiskers. Disgusted with his experiences, Musty goes his way.
Review Excerpt
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Keep Moving is what happens when commerce itself develops a sadistic sense of humor and hires Mack Sennett’s most masochistic jester to ring up the catastrophe.
Shot in the amber haze of 1915 Fort Lee, this one-reel grenade detonates the polite consumer comedy of the era. Instead of clerks and courting, we get Musty—part scarecrow, part cash-register Sisyphus—whose face seems permanently set to “wince.” The plot, if one can tether such nitroglycerin, is a daisy-chain of retail vendettas that b..."
