The key moment in Seven Chances is thus the previously mentioned procession of the brides, in which the film moves from what had been mostly genteel comedy into pure farce. This deep focus shot is the moment in which the sexual forces driving the film completely are turned on their head.[1] In the first half, the women are objects toward a goal—their names appear on a list, but their actual personalities and characterizations are unimportant. Keaton subverts this instead turning himself into the object of desire, but this because of his money than his own personality—he becomes a means to an end than an actual end. As Mowes notes about this shot, “Railing, arch, enclosures, and held within them a stationary figure who passively waiting, but now a man rather than a woman—all the elements proclaim that a great reversal has come.”[2] The slapstick that will follow is thus more than just a transition of comedy but a subversive commentary on class and capitalism by reversing the form of comedy. For Jimmy, the object in the first half is not marriage but money, disdained in the genteel comedy, and in the second half not money but marriage (to Mary), a tradition upheld by genteel comedy. But this is the opposite for the universe he inhabits in the two sections of the film. When the citizens of the town are made aware that there is money involved, chaos ensues so much that it seems the entire community is warped into a slapstick tradition. Before this moment, it appeared that this town was a model of genteel traditions and social upstanding, but the capital greed suddenly changes everything, sending bride after bride from all shapes, sizes, and classes. The humor loses all tradition of narrative-driven realism in favor of “lowering” these once genteel characters into the humor of the working class by exposing the genteel women’s true desire. [3]
