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Life During Wartime #7: SHERLOCK JR. (Patreon exclusive)
Sherlock Jr. (1924) U.S.: Hoopla, Kanopy, IndiePix Canada: Hoopla
Buster Keaton is one of the “big four” silent comedians–a group that includes Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Harry Langdon–who produced a fascinating body of fraught work that is slyly progressive (especially in regards to gender) and sometimes uncomfortable. While the kids have seen films by all of these guys, I was happy to give them a recap of their personas:
Langdon affected a child-like, wide-eyed, powdered, often “feminized” demeanour
Chaplin’s “Little Tramp” presented as a “hobo” archetype, poor and lovelorn and unfailingly optimistic
Harold Lloyd’s harried “Glass” persona was all bespectacled, go-getter enthusiasm, and he was most effective as a sometimes-literal social climber
Keaton maintained an “Old Stony Face” implacability in the face of escalating chaos
We named our Blue Heeler “Buster Keaton” because, and this is a joke I’m fond of and repeat endlessly to the horror and frustration of my kids, the two of them share the same resting facial expression. But, they do.
Keaton made Sherlock Jr. in 1924 at the peak of his popularity and hired good friend Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, the man he credited with discovering him, to be his co-director. I told the kids in brief about how Arbuckle was a star comedian who was accused of raping and murdering Virginia Rappe in 1921. Because of his weight, it was alleged that he had crushed her bladder, causing the peritonitis that resulted in her death.
Arbuckle was tried three times and formally acquitted after the third. The judge issued a formal apology to Arbuckle, but it did nothing to resurrect Arbuckle’s career or restore his reputation. We opened our evening with Arbuckle’s His Wedding Night, a 17-minute short from 1917 co-starring Keaton in which Arbuckle stars as a slovenly soda jerk keen on taking shortcuts. Watching it today reveals the seeds of the portly-clown archetype that endures in modern-day guys like John Belushi, John Candy, Chris Farley, and Jack Black. My kids had recently seen Black’s quarantine TikTok where he dances shirtless in his backyard.
Without debating the merits of the case against Arbuckle and his subsequent acquittal:
How should we treat films featuring/produced by problematic men?
What would a creator have to do for you to advocate for all of their films to be destroyed?
What is the difference between an individual’s choice not to patronize a specific artist vs. a collective decision to destroy/suppress a body of work?
How are African-Americans treated inHis Wedding Night?
How does Arbuckle’s screen persona in this short film feed into the accusations levelled against him? (Thinking especially of a gag involving a sleeping potion during which Fatty repeatedly molests an unconscious woman.)
After the screenings, both kids went to the Internet to research the Fatty Arbuckle case in greater detail. There’s a good article on the Smithsonian site that breaks it all down. When we eventually focus on Arbuckle directly, we’ll talk in detail about how Hearst’s tabloid sensationalism saw a juicy story and ran with it–and how Rappe, as part of the case for the defense, was posthumously accused of, among other things, being a venereal-diseased whore.
This early glimpse of Keaton provides insight into how he evolved and perfected his stoic persona over the years. Find in His Wedding Night a far more expressive comedian given to winking, grimacing–all the things in short supply by the time of Sherlock Jr.. There’s even a sequence involving drunken cross-dressing as Keaton models a wedding dress for a nervous bride (before getting “married” to Fatty).
Keaton smuggled Arbuckle onto the set of Sherlock Jr. under the pseudonym of “William Goodrich,” but a tiff turned into a rift and Arbuckle was jettisoned mid-shoot by his old friend, who later theorized that the ordeal had changed him. Sherlock Jr. concerns Keaton’s character being framed for the theft of a pocket-watch and turned out in disgrace from the home of his would-be fiancee. She doesn’t believe it entirely, however, and figures out the real malefactor is none other than a rival suitor, played by Ward Crane.
Although Keaton dreams of being a detective, who is it that actually solves the mystery?
Keaton was famously proud of having roughly a quarter of the title cards of his contemporaries–why was he boastful about this accomplishment?
How does he tell the backstory of his character through action and not words?
Keaton did the bulk of his stunts (I want to say all, but I find especially with teens that when you make absolute statements, they’ll become distracted by the sport of proving you wrong), including one in this film where, on top of a train, he pulls on a water-tower spout, drenching himself. The first take of this gag had Keaton flying off the train and hitting his neck on a rail, breaking it. He complained of pain and went home for the day, but came back the next morning to finish the movie. He lived with the pain until 1935–eleven years after breaking it–when an X-ray to confirmed he had indeed broken it.
As we discussed inJoe Versus theVolcanoand the “gong” gag, what are the setups to the gags inSherlock Jr., and what are the layers of pay-off for each?
Even non-physical gags in this film have multiple pay-offs (like the changing of the price of the chocolates from $1 to $4); what do these gags have to say about Keaton’s station and character?
Keaton appears in drag again here. Drag was a standard vaudeville conceit. My kids are pretty progressive about LGBTQX issues and have seen their fair share of drag acts courtesy of their too-permissive and drag-loving parents. If your kids are encountering this for the first time, it’s worth interrogating what it is they find to be funny about drag, if they find it funny. How does drag, for instance, reinforce or defeat gender stereotypes?
How did Keaton achieve the illusion of stepping into the movie?
When he falls asleep in the booth, what’s happening–is that his soul? His dream consciousness? What is the nature of reality inSherlock Jr.as defined by the rules it sets for itself? What, in other words, is he dreaming about, and how is he dreaming about it?
Silent comedy has a specific cadence to it, much of it owing to the “standard silent-film speed” of 16 frames per second. 24 frames per second (fps) is the speed at which the human eye interprets static images as images in motion. Many films of the time came with instructions to the projectionists about what speed they should hand-crank the films at, including, sometimes, a separate edict to speed up during action sequences. George Miller “undercranked” the action sequences in the first two Mad Max movies to make them seem more kinetic and dangerous. Mel Gibson commented at one point that he had learned to act in different speeds because of Miller.
There was no standard, in truth, but if you have a film that was shot at 16 frames per second and run it on a modern projector at 24 fps, everything looks a little sped-up. Speed is critical to comic timing, naturally, and questions your kids might have about why silent films sometimes appear jerky and sped-up can be answered in this way. Many projectors now won’t even run film at 16fps without manual, and expert, adjustment.
Part of our discussion about Sherlock Jr. covered how upwards of 80% of all silent films have been lost due to mistreatment, wilful destruction (over safety concerns), or explosive combustion. Both of the kids are taking chemistry, so we went into the idea of Cellulose Nitrate (or Nitrocellulose) becoming unstable at 70 degrees and in humidity greater than 50%. Nitrocellulose was an offshoot of the manufacture of “gun cotton,” in which nitric acid and sulphuric acid were applied to cotton, thus making it explosively flammable.
When the same process was applied to cellulose, voilà, an incredibly dangerous plastic that worked great as a lacquer for film. Nitrate prints produce some of the starkest, most unforgettable images you’ll ever see, should you be lucky enough to find a place that can safely project them. Early projection booths had a requirement that they be lined with asbestos, which, of course, comes with its own carcinogenic problems. Movies killed you coming and going. A fun fact to share with the kids is that water only tended to exacerbate Nitrate fires.
Safer film stocks were available prior to the discontinuation of nitrate in the mid-1950s, but they were expensive. It was cheaper to fireproof booths and hope for the best than to make the switch.
All of this is interesting in and of itself if you’re a gigantic nerd, but as it pertains to Sherlock Jr. there’s a gag therein involving an exploding billiard ball that the great dream detective somehow manages to never strike. For a while in the late 19th century, as a means of staving off the looming extinction of elephants because of mass harvesting of their ivory for, among other things, billiard balls, Very Smart People made billiard balls out of celluloid. And, yes, sometimes they exploded when you hit them.
Finally:
What is this movie about?
There are good answers to this question, some of which include challenges to what makes males attractive and how our culture codes masculinity. My daughter singled out the strength and intelligence of the young woman and my son brought up how sexual jealousy made the Keaton character briefly unlikeable. They loved the film–and loved it more, I think, because they were prepped not to take the action scenes for granted, nor the ingenuity of the effects. Silent-era stars, the ones we remember and study, were inventors and innovators–scientists, engineers, physicists, all of these things. Showmen may be last on the list of things they were They were great drivers, horsemen, athletes capable of unimaginable levels of derring-do. Sherlock Jr. sets up future discussions of artists like Jackie Chan and Tom Cruise. Even James Bond’s car gag from The Living Daylights. Meanwhile, the meta aspects of it resurface in films as diverse as Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo, Lamberto Bava’s Demons, and Joe Dante’s Gremlins 2. Keaton is the gift that keeps on giving.
