Review #1,361: 'Sherlock Jr.' (1924)

Whenever conversation happens to turn to the topic of silent comedy, it isn't long until Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton are mentioned. The likes of Fatty Arbuckle and Laurel and Hardy get honourable mentions, but Chaplin, Lloyd and Keaton form a Holy Trinity, completely untouchable when it comes to their bodies of work. Debate rages on about who was the best: Chaplin had the heart, Lloyd delivered the thrills, and Keaton was a pure innovator, and not only for the comedy genre, but for cinema as a whole. The Kid and Safety Last! are two of the finest examples, but has there ever been a more jaw-dropping silent comedy than Keaton's Sherlock Jr., both in terms of laughs and sheer invention? I think not, and even at just 45 minutes, Sherlock Jr. is still one of the funniest movies ever made, and manages to squeeze more jokes, stunts and ground-breaking cinematic trickery than most feature-length movies could ever dream of.

A hapless theatre projectionist and janitor (played by Keaton) dreams about being a great detective, studying the topic in between sweeping floors and finding customer's lost dollars. He also has a sweetheart (Kathryn McGuire), who he buys a $1 box of chocolates on his way to visit her, changing the price tag to $4 in a bid to impress her. But he has a rival in his quest for the girl's affections, a dodgy and dapper character known as 'the local sheik', played by Ward Crane. We meet the sheik as he is pawning a pocket watch for $4, which he stole from the girl's father, and purchases a $3 box of chocolates in a bid to win the girl's love and steal her from the poor projectionist. When the father (Buster's dad Joe Keaton) notices the watch is missing, the sheik slips the pawn ticket into the projectionist's pocket, framing him for the crime. After his detective skills backfire and he is banished from the girl's home, the dismayed projectionist returns to his work and falls asleep as the movie Hearts and Pearls plays.

The rest of the movie takes place within the projectionist's dream, where he fantasises about being the world's greatest detective, Sherlock Jr. At first it seems like a strange direction to take the story, but moving the action into the realm of fantasy allows Keaton to test the limits of what could be done with a camera back in 1924. He leaps into the screen as the audience watches on, using expert framing and cutting techniques to place the character into a number of perilous situations. One moment he is on a cliff's edge, the next he is surrounded by a pack of hungry lions. From then on, Sherlock Jr. simply doesn't let up, delivering a carousel of genuinely dangerous stunt work and hilarious sight gags. A personal favourite of mine is the game of billiards, during which Keaton pulls of a number of extraordinary tricks shots with the added excitement of knowing that one of the balls is actually a cleverly-disguised bomb. Unbelievably, critics panned it upon its release, labelling it as unfunny and strange. Nearly 100 years later, it is recognised as one of the most innovative films of its day, and rightly so.


Directed by: Buster Keaton
Starring: Buster Keaton, Kathryn McGuire, Ward Crane, Joe Keaton
Country: USA

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie