Sherlock Jr. (1924)
A film projectionist framed for stealing a watch falls asleep at work and walks into the movie on the screen, where he becomes the great detective he dreams of being. Keaton builds the gag out of pure editing — the world cutting out from under him — then does his own motorcycle stunts on the handlebars with no driver.
Forty-five minutes, and at least three shots that filmmakers still can’t fully explain. The dream-within-the-screen was a century early.
Background
Sherlock Jr. is the shortest of Keaton’s major features, at about forty-five minutes. It has a simple premise: a projectionist falls asleep and dreams himself into the film he is showing. During the making, Keaton broke his neck in a stunt on a water tower, though he did not learn about the injury until years later. His father, Joe Keaton, appears in the cast. The film was added to the National Film Registry in 1991.
What to watch for
The sequence in which Keaton steps into the screen and finds the scene changing around him is a technical marvel. Each time the film cuts, the location changes but he remains in the same position on the screen, and it took Keaton and his crew days to line up the shots. The motorcycle ride on the handlebars is also astonishing. Watch for the way the film plays with the audience’s relationship to the screen; it feels surprisingly modern, and it is a lot of fun.
