Year: 1924
Director: Buster Keaton
Country: US
Buster Keaton stars as a film projectionist, who longs to be a detective, and puts his meager skills to work when he is framed by a rival for stealing his girlfriend's father's pocket-watch.
While The General (1926) was a great Buster Keaton picture, I would say that Sherlock Jr. is his absolute best. Sherlock Jr. is a short film, lasting only about 35 minutes, which seems to work in the film’s favor. Made in 1924 came at a transition point in Keaton's career--one year after he had stopped making two-reel shorts, and was concentrating exclusively on longer features, as were virtually all of the other major silent comedians. Keaton claimed "once we started into features, we had to stop doing impossible things. We had to make an audience believe our story,"
Keaton excelled at doing impossible things, and his sight gags and death-defying stunts are extraordinary not only for their ingeniousness, but for their flawless execution, making complex physical feats look completely effortless. Such stunts are always filmed in continuous long takes, no interruption, to prove that they were legitimate and not faked. Unfortunately, sometimes these stunts would end in serious injury. In one scene Buster grabs onto the watertower spout and is knocked down to the train tracks by the force of the rushing water; he actually broke his neck and didn't find out until an examination decades later.
Although Keaton would never admit to having intellectual intentions with his art, ultimately Sherlock Jr is an extraordinary study of the nature of film and the dreamlike escapist quality of it. When Buster walks into the screen and becomes a participant in the movie; he is exemplifying the greatest quality of the medium. Keaton's work is unlike anything made at the time. Praise it! 5/5
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