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It is a far from traditional proposal. Buster Keaton takes a breath in the midst of being chased by his lumbering boss, Joe Roberts, pops down on one knee, takes hold of Virginia Fox's hand and gazes up at her, and says: "Je ne serai pas toujours forgeron et ce-jour-la me permettrez-vous …" (I won't always be a blacksmith, and today, I would like to ask …) What? He is cruelly cut off as a moment later, her stern-looking father appears and there is no time for an answer, in any language. It's not much of a love scene, perhaps, but this snippet from a recently unearthed French print of Keaton's The Blacksmith offers far more romance than the original.

Film historian Fernando Peña had already impressed his peers and gladdened the hearts of silent film fans with his discovery, in 2008, of a near-complete print of Fritz Lang's sci-fi spectacular Metropolis. A month ago, Variety reports, he found another treasure in Argentina's Museo del Cine – a 9.5mm print of Buster Keaton's 1922 The Blacksmith complete with French intertitles and some entirely new, unseen footage. "If Metropolis was Peña's Holy Grail of lost film finds, count The Blacksmith as his Shroud of Turin," Scott Foundas writes in Variety, and his excitement is totally understandable.

Films of this era were often filmed with two cameras, each recording a version for the domestic and export market, so it is not unusual to find prints that include an extra shot or noticeably different camera angles. However, this cut of The Blacksmith deviates from the familiar print in so many ways that silent film historian Kevin Brownlow has called the difference "unprecedented". There's half a reel (about five to six minutes) of fresh material here, never-before-seen footage of one of the world's most popular and accomplished comedians. John Bengtson, a Los Angeles-based silent film historian and author of books about Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, suggests this may be the original version of the film, and the scenes in the more familiar version were re-shoots to improve the film for the American market.

The two-reel comedy, barely 20 minutes long, was written and directed by Keaton with Malcolm St Clair, and although it has a happily-ever-after ending, the romantic plot line is almost entirely sidelined in favour of gags. The smithy setting offers the hook for a succession of inventive, hilarious, but only loosely connected horse, car and train gags. Keaton fries eggs on his furnace, uses a balloon in place of a car jack, shoes a horse in elegant beribboned sandals and in a fantastic set piece, trashes a gleaming white Rolls-Royce while fixing up a battered Model T. Even the final scene, a snapshot of domestic bliss, offers a foretaste in miniature of Keaton's most celebrated and expensive stunt – the centrepiece of his classic feature-length film The General (1926).

According to Variety, and the excerpt that has been made available online, the newly discovered version of The Blacksmith has far more time for lovey-dovey stuff. An early sequence in which Keaton smears his lady's white horse with oil is ditched in favour of the chase scene and that interrupted proposal. The gag with the horse is repeated, and escalated, in trademark Keaton style later in the film, when he inadvertently defaces that pristine Roller with oil, a lump hammer and a blowtorch. Whether that makes its loss easier to bear, we'll find out when we see the full print. Intriguingly, we're also told that there is a slightly different ending to the film in this new version.

This is a really exciting and totally unexpected discovery. Fans of The Blacksmith will be happy to see one of Keaton's flimsiest romances fleshed out – and the ending of the film makes a lot more sense now. Once this new Blacksmith is restored and available to view in its entirety, we will be able to judge which version we prefer, and whether or not the Great Stone Face was right to favour slapstick over romance.