Sherlock Jr is rightly considered as one of the many great films of
Buster Keaton’s career. The movie introduces many technical innovations and
complex stunts which run side by side the screen comedian’s usual deadpan
humour and sight gags to create one of his and the era’s best. A lowly movie
theatre projectionist (Keaton) has two dreams in life. He wants to be a
detective and wants to snare the love of his life. After being framed by a love
rival for a burglary at the girl’s house he is banished, told never to return.
His attempts to solve the crime and clear his name come to a dead end so he
returns to the cinema where he falls asleep behind the projector. Here, the man
literally splits in two (using double exposure) and the dream version of Sherlock
Jr enters the movie screen where he has much more success at solving crimes and
attracting the attention of beautiful women.
Few films from the era (or any
era) display as much inventiveness or technical nouse as Sherlock Jr. Working at a time before many of the cinematic
inventions that we take for granted today, including sound of course, Keaton
here constructs a beautifully observed comedy which combines the detective
genre with an introspective study of his medium while using romance as a framing
device. The movie is, at just forty-four minutes, much shorter than most of his
features, straddling somewhere between short and feature but barely a second of
screen time is wasted with jokes coming thick and fast. If comedy ever does run
dry, the eyes are dazzled with a technical marvel or bone crunching stunt which
ninety years on, will still make the audience wince.
