Convict 13 marks the intrusion, once again in Keaton’s work, of the spectacle within the spectacle. But unlike Sherlock Jr. or The Cameraman, this time it is a scandalous intrusion, because we are shown a capital execution that is filmed with the same objectivity as a sports competition… One of the fundamental characteristics of Keaton’s genius is to preserve, in the face of excess, a classical rigour: he thus transforms the original outrageousness of the caricature into the merciless dryness of an observation, all the more terrible
because, unlike Chaplin, emotion is not tolerated. Thus, Keaton’s itinerary in this film conveys the most pessimistic of morals, that of interchangeability; one can be hanged, watch being hanged or help hanging. A convict, or a policeman, are no more than men dressed as convicts and policemen. Keaton, in one or the other, retains the same profound and sad unity of gaze, under the multiplicity of appearances.

Jean-André Fieschi, “Cahiers du cinema”, n. 130, April 1962

Convict 13 was restored from a nitrate print preserved in the Lobster Films collection and an incomplete 35mm safety dupe negative made from Czech material preserved at the Cinémathèque française. Some short fragments were added from two triacetate 16mm prints from a private collection. Intertitles were reconstructed according to the original font, based on the translation of original French and Czech cards.

The framing devices in Day Dreams are the letters which Buster writes to his girl, whom he has left to prove himself worthy of her. He writes that he is “cleaning up in Wall Street”. She dreams of an elegant wizard of the tickertape; the reality is a street cleaner. He writes that he is an actor. She imagines a Hamlet Buster; the fact is that he is an extra having terrible trouble with his spear and finally getting thrown out of the theatre. The idea is, generally speaking, more attractive than the execution; and the return to the girl and the relationship between them is not managed with Keaton’s usual clear grasp of character. The finale, however, is memorable. Running – for some reason – from the police, Buster leaps from the jetty on to a ferryboat – only to find that it is not as he had thought going out, but coming in. He therefore escapes from a window and on to the great paddlewheel, which begins to move round and round. To keep from going under the water, he must keep going round it like a mouse in a treadmill, endlessly.

David Robinson, Keaton, Martin Secker & Warburg, London 1969

Day Dreams was restored from a 35mm safety dupe negative made from Czech material provided by the Cinémathèque française and two nitrate prints from EYE Film Institute and the Lobster Film collection. Some short fragments were added from a safety sound aperture fine grain in the Blackhawk Films Collection preserved at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Intertitles were reconstructed according to the original font, based on the translation of original French and Czech cards. Restored by Lobster Films laboratories in 2015.