Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 23 April

Sherlock Jr. (Keaton, 1924)

Guests at the recent TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood had the usual riches to choose from – including a red carpet celebration of the 30th anniversary of Pulp Fiction – but a highlight must have been the centenary screening Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr.

Like the Beatles versus the Stones, film fans have to choose between Chaplin and Keaton as their favourite silent comedian. It’s just a cinephile rule.

I’m a Keaton man, me. I’ve always found Chaplin to be too sentimental, too ingratiating, despite the evident physical prowess.

Thanks to film festival ‘live cinema’ screenings, I had previously seen The General, Steamboat Bill, Jr. and The Cameraman but, apart from highlight reel clips, I’d never seen Keaton’s 1924 masterpiece Sherlock Jr. until last night.

Keaton plays a cinema projectionist who dreams of becoming a detective. The object of his affection (Kathryn McGuire) has her head turned by a smooth criminal (Ward Crane) who, thanks to a stolen pocket watch and a local pawnbroker, can woo her with a three dollar box of chocolates.

Keaton’s lovelorn Projectionist is framed for the theft and attempts .

Back at work, he falls asleep in the bio box and dreams of becoming detective Sherlock Jr, inside the film itself, the great hero of his own story.

It’s an old film, so there are old jokes. Keaton slips on a banana skin in the first five minutes. But you can also see the genius inventing screen comedy in front of your eyes. He uses the technology – editing, perspective, lighting, optical effects – alongside his vaudevillian experience and his physical fearlessness, to produce jaw-dropping moments, one after the other.

The stunts are astounding, but it is the aplomb with which Keaton carries them off that make them great cinema, as opposed to just … stunts, I guess.

Credit should be given to the supporting cast, especially the bountifully moustachioed Crane who more than holds his own in the physical comedy department. He died of pneumonia four years later, at the age of only 38.

But it’s Keaton’s genius that we are all here to see, a genius as a director as well as a performer.

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Where to watch Sherlock Jr.*