Short Take: Sherlock, Jr.

The silent comedy Sherlock, Jr. features actor-director Buster Keaton at his most magical. Keaton plays a movie projectionist with ambitions of becoming a detective. He's also in love with a local girl (Kathryn McGuire) whom he wants to marry. The latter hope is seemingly dashed after a rival suitor (Ward Crane) frames him for the theft of her father's pocket watch. Banished from her home, he returns to work, and falls asleep after starting up the night's picture. He dreams the girl, the rival, and the father have assumed the identities of the film's characters, and the rival has stolen a valuable family necklace. The projectionist then enters the film to become Sherlock, Jr., the world's greatest detective, and he solves the crime. The dream sequence, which takes up half the film's 44-minute running time, is as visually astonishing as films get. When the projectionist first enters the movie-within-the-movie, he confronts and interacts with a series of changing tableaux. The shifts and action are so immaculately staged and timed that they appear to be occurring in a single unbroken shot. The chase that caps the dream sequence may be the most dizzingly inventive and sleekly executed piece of extended slapstick ever. It begins on foot, with Sherlock escaping the villain's lair by jumping through a dress box, after which he's disguised in the clothing it contained, and then by jumping into an open suitcase, at which point he (briefly) disappears. Things continue with Sherlock riding the handlebars of a moving though (for the most part) driverless motorcycle, and then into a car with the girl, with pitfall after pitfall after pitfall narrowly and at times fantastically avoided. One can hardly believe what one is seeing. Keaton sets a standard only the finest comedy and action filmmakers have approached, much less achieved. The film's scenario was written by Clyde Bruckman, Jean Havez, and Joseph A. Mitchell. Byron Houck and Elgin Lessley provided the cinematography. Keaton is credited with the masterful editing.

Short Take: Ballet mécanique

Ballet mécanique (1924) is a marvelous non-narrative short film. (The running time is eleven minutes.) It's one of the high points of 1920s experimental filmmaking. Directed by the painter Fernand Léger in collaboration with the U. S. filmmaker Dudley Murphy, it explores shape and movement in all its myriad forms. The film opens with an animated Cubist-style cartoon figure of Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp. It then shifts to a shot of a woman riding in a swing. A face is reduced to a lipsticked mouth breaking into a grin, and kohled eyes open and close as if keeping a beat. There are shifting patterns of two dimensional shapes, rotating spheres, and engine gears in operation. Machines have life, and living things move in mechanized patterns. Léger's paintings from the period interpret people and the trappings of life as mechanical forms; they're very much of a piece with the film's style and themes. The most remarkable aspect of the picture is its immersive quality. The movement within the frames combine with the editing in ways that evoke melody and rhythm. One cannot help but be carried along by the dancing visuals, and one may feel one is experiencing music in the form of imagery. Man Ray was reportedly a consultant on the film.