Sherlock Jr.
Short description
Buster Keaton plays a movie theater projectionist who dreams of becoming a detective. He is courting a young woman, but a rival for her attention sets him up: a watch belonging to her father goes missing, and the projectionist is blamed for the theft. His attempts to clear himself by playing investigator come to nothing. Back at work, dejected, he falls asleep during a screening and dreams that he walks into the film on the screen, where he becomes the detective Sherlock Jr. and takes on a case of his own.
The film is a silent comedy built around visual gags and Keaton's physical performance. It was directed by Keaton himself, the fourth of the thirteen features he directed, following Our Hospitality and preceding The Navigator, from a screenplay by Clyde Bruckman and produced by Keaton with Joseph M. Schenck. Kathryn McGuire plays the girl, with Joe Keaton, Erwin Connelly and Ward Crane in supporting roles. It runs 45 minutes.
Reception divides sharply by source. On IMDb it holds 3.2/10 from 19 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 8/10 from 1,209 votes. A film critics' rating of 9.8/10 from 42 reviews places it far above the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- During the filming of the scene at the station, when water from a tank is poured onto Sherlock, Keaton suffered a neck injury from the strong flow of water and suffered from migraines for many years without knowing the true cause. He was only correctly diagnosed in the 1930s.
- Buster Keaton (1895-1966) trained with a specialist for four months to be able to perform all the stunts that the audience sees Sherlock Jr. perform while playing pool. And even after these lengthy rehearsals, filming took five days. When he finished, all the filmed stunts and tricks were edited together to create the illusion that everything happens during a single game.
- The street with Victorian houses, down which the characters of Van Johnson (1916-2008) and Buster Keaton ride bicycles at the beginning of the film, was built as the street where the heroine Judy Garland (1922-1969) lived with her family in Vincente Minnelli’s (1903-1986) musical 'Meet Me in St. Louis' (1944).
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
