Sherlock Jr

USA 1924

Dir: Buster Keaton

45 mins

Cast: Buster Keaton, Kathryn McGuire, Joe Keaton

Rating: G

... Sherlock Jr is a masterpiece of the format. It sets up the story well, slides into fantasy with ease, before giving us what is hands-down the most breathtaking series of stunts and comedic pratfalls I’ve seen in any silent film to-date. The descriptive title cards keep the story developing but, like a good short film ought, the story doesn’t really need them, with Keaton flexing his considerable creative talent to ensure the laughs and thrills are maximised as best as possible. Immensely enjoyable, with a timelessness and honesty of the day, Sherlock Jr is one hell of a fine film from one of cinema’s most accomplished creators.

Rodney Twelftree, fernbyfilms.com

In many ways, Buster Keaton was the cinema’s first modernist, an old-fashioned romantic with a 20th century mind behind the deadpan visage. Sherlock Jr. (1924) is not only one of his masterpieces, it pushes the very concept of cinema into new territory.

... The special effects are astounding and all the more impressive given the tools at his disposal, but they are also hilarious and ingenious. No other silent film turns logic on its head with such grace and comic hilarity.

...It placed in the number 54 spot in the 2022 Sight & Sound Greatest Films of All Time poll.

Sean Axmaker, Stream on demand

Keaton's third feature under his own steam is an incredible technical accomplishment, but also an almost Pirandellian exploration of the nature of cinematic reality. Buster plays a cinema projectionist, framed for theft by a jealous rival for his girl's hand, who daydreams himself into life as a daring detective. ... The timing here is incredible (a technical marvel, in fact);  even more so in the great chase sequence, an veritable cascade of unbelievably complex gags (like the moment when Buster, on the handlebars of a riderless, runaway motor-bike passing some ditch-digging roadworks, receives a spadeful of earth in the face from each oblivious navvy in turn). It leaves Chaplin standing.

Time Out