Film Forum is not your typical movie theater. As AMC, Regal and other chains become ever more reliant on blockbuster titles, independent theaters are a reminder that the big screen can be more than a tapestry for explosions. Even fewer spotlight older releases. At Film Forum, alongside contemporary work, classics are given an equal claim on our attention. The devotion to the past might make Film Forum seem more like a museum than a theater, but in practice it feels like an undiscovered time machine, hiding in plain sight on Houston Street. This past September, I was lucky enough to catch its screening of Buster Keaton’s “Sherlock Jr” (1924).
Aside from Charlie Chaplin, Keaton is probably the most recognizable figure from Hollywood’s silent era. He remains in the popular memory for good reason. His films, often written, produced, directed, and edited by him, manage to laugh and move us, to be mocking and sincere. “Sherlock Jr.” is no exception. As is usually the case with Keaton, the dual effects of his film come mainly from his performance. He plays a poor projectionist at a local theater. Half his days are spent daydreaming about becoming a detective, and the other half he spends thinking of a girl he is courting. Like Chaplin’s Tramp, Keaton’s projectionist renders 1920s society intelligible through his incomprehension of it.
Early in the film, the projectionist is sweeping up after a show. Broke and hoping to buy his love a present, he digs through the litter in search of loose change. Right as he finds a few bucks, a woman returns looking for a dollar she left behind. Keaton cannot bring himself to lie, so instead he attempts to wiggle his way out of the situation by asking her to “Describe it.” Not a moment after she has left with her money, an old lady comes looking for another one of the bills he has found, and then a burly man arrives who finds a wallet full of cash he never noticed. In between these formal jokes, much of the mirth a knowing audience derives from the scene is in Keaton’s constant nervousness, especially when no one else is around. He seems fundamentally uncomfortable in his own skin, ready to jump in fear as soon as a pretty woman or large-jawed man turns the corner. Forget about detective work—Keaton has a hard enough time working as a janitor. We laugh, but who hasn’t worked as a waiter or cashier and felt anxious about it the entire time? Like Harrison Ford, Keaton is at his liveliest when he looks worried.
The constant worry present on Keaton’s face lends his film a two-fold appeal that’s well-suited to an audience of all ages. Shown as part of Film Forum’s “Jr.” series, “Sherlock Jr.” attracted a mix of kids and older film nerds. For the latter group, Keaton’s underdog persona can be surprisingly moving. Of all the roles the projectionist struggles to fulfill, that of the man is the most daunting. In his waking life, he is poor, uncertain, and physically unimposing, all qualities his romantic rival (“the Sheik”) appears to possess. When his opponent frames him for stealing a watch belonging to his love’s father, he assumes all is lost. With the excuse of the theft, the girl will easily opt for the other man, he thinks, because the society around him indicates that the Sheik is what a woman wants. In his dreams, the projectionist, now “Sherlock Jr.”, is in command. Dangerous as the Sheik is, in the projectionist’s subconscious he cannot match Keaton’s bravery. Our hero’s fantasy is not to replace his enemy, however, but to best him at his own game. Throughout the adventure, Sherlock Jr. remains a good person. Never does he descend into the dishonesty or brutishness that underlie the Sheik’s masculine façade. Keaton is the chivalric male he ought to be: clever, daring, well-intentioned. It is with no little irony, then, that Keaton reveals the projectionist’s heroic ideal as unnecessary. Shortly after he awakes, the girl arrives, having solved the mystery. As everyone except the projectionist has been able to tell, she has liked him best the whole time. His sweetness and her intelligence ensured the happy ending well before the dream sequence. Have Hollywood heroics misled the film projector? Keaton doesn’t seem to think the answer is clear-cut. Unsure what to do or say after the girl expresses her remorse, the projectionist observes a romance movie playing in the theater. Taking his cues from the actors on screen, he kisses the girl’s hand, slips an engagement ring on her finger, and kisses her on the mouth. Convention may still have its place, albeit a tempered one.
For the children in the audience, the film’s takes on heroism and fiction likely went unnoticed; more appealing were the slapstick and bracing action that sold the experience. At 97 years old, the film is far more inventive than the average CGI-laden Disney release. Much of this is due to Keaton’s physical comedy, almost absent in our highly cerebral age of stand-up. There are moments of genuine surprise that can reduce the best-travelled cinephile to a state of youthful wonder. One of the most sophisticated occurs at the beginning of a dream. Asleep at the projector, our hero looks into the theater. Thinking he is still awake, he is horrified to see that the actors on screen have become the girl and the Sheik. Determined to stop his enemy from wooing her, the projectionist runs into the theater and climbs into the screen, but his attempts to reach the girl are repeatedly thwarted by editing. As he is about to save her from the Sheiks clutches, the filmmaker cuts to a long shot of a house and he barrels into the front door.
The power of these moments would have been far reduced for the audience had we not been in the theater. To see Keaton climb into a screen while watching him through a similar screen was to be baffled as to how many walls were being broken. Later on in the dream, Keaton is seated on the handle of a motorcycle, in hot pursuit of the Sheik and the now-abducted girl. Keaton assumes a friend is driving the bike, but in fact the driver was knocked off early in the chase. As Keaton careens through town, his continued survival, unaided by a computer, is a marvelous feat. When he and a train race toward and narrowly miss each other in a single shot, the tension is at a height George Miller would be proud of. Key to the sequence’s effectiveness was the total experience created by the theater. Had the screen been smaller, the images of less pristine quality, or the lack of distractions not absolute, I would have been only impressed. As it was, the crowd of old and young cinemagoers of which I was a part laughed regularly, with an intensity rivaled only by spellbound silence.
Later in the day, I looked up “Sherlock Jr.” on YouTube. It can delight under any viewing conditions, but the theater experience cannot be replicated at home. The first quality I missed was the live music, performed by a pianist to a score of his own composition. I greatly prefer it to the score for the online cut, and will probably never hear it again.
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