The most technically dazzling comedy of the silent era and it brings the laughs, as well. It’s not the first movie to dissect the conventions of cinema and film editing for comedic purposes, but it takes the idea further out than anyone else had at that point. It all adds up to a great joke about the movies’ effect on the imagination. Here, Buster Keaton is a lowly film projectionist who aspires to be a detective. One day, he gets the chance to solve a crime only to see his efforts go completely wrong, so he mopes back to the movie theater, where he falls asleep in the projection booth and has a surreal dream in which he steps into the film that’s playing and redeems himself.
The most beautifully crafted gag in this furiously paced forty-four minutes is the scene where Keaton enters the screen and then suddenly finds the scenery changing every few seconds, putting him everywhere from the middle of a city street to a desert to a snowbank to a jungle setting surrounded by lions, as he slips and trips in time with the editing. Let’s also mention Keaton risking his life (for real) in an extended slapstick sequence where he’s stuck on the handlebars of a speeding motorcycle—no camera tricks—without a driver while cars swerve around him and he’s pelted with dirt. Keaton actually fractured his neck during a stunt where he hangs from the open mouth of a railroad water pipe that gushes over him. He suffered severe headaches from it for years.
One of Keaton’s least successful films in its day. Over time, it’s become rightfully regarded as one of his masterpieces.