Fart, flickor och faror

In Sherlock Jr. Buster Keaton plays a kind of early Last Action Hero. He plays a projectionist who walks into the screen and starts to mingle with the actors. Keaton becomes involved in the time and space flow which he so often manipulates in his films. It all turns out as a kind of American surrealism full of Keaton's very special pranks. One comic sequence after another. Today Buster Keaton is a source of laughter for many, but it has not always been that way. His rich subtle humour was not fully appreciated during the silent film era, but after a while his stone face expression became hugely successful. However the minimal facial expressions were outshone by his body movements. When performing for the camera his body became a floundering dynamo filled with acrobatic elegance. The Critics: ''At the end of the twenties Jean Cocteau said ... I have only ever seen three great films: Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr., Chaplin's The Gold Rush and Eisenstein's Potemkin ... '' (Paul Malmkjaer, Danish Film Museum's Information Sheet October 1959) ''Film is like a dream: the medium's lack of logic is the logic of dreams. This dreamy feeling is enhanced by the stylized realism.'' (George Ellis, The Film Career of Buster Keaton, Boston 1977) '' ... not only violently funny but also astonishing.'' (Bjorn Nordstrom, Expressen 1972)