Week #1: Released in 1924, directed by Buster Keaton. 45 minutes! New to me.

LetterBoxd score: 5 stars

I was a bit worried that, as a 99-year old comedy that I was watching alone in my basement, this would fall flat. But oh my God, what a delight. It moves fast from joke to joke, it’s visually inventive, and it’s just really, really funny. Can’t wait to watch again with the family.

It’s also a fantastic way to start this project; to the extent it’s about something more than gags and jokes, it’s about the magic of film. Most of the movie is literally a dream sequence where Keaton imagines himself stepping into the pictures on the screen. At first, we get a series of gags that only the movies make possible: scene changes that put him in increasingly awkward positions. But later, we see how the film version of his life is a heightened reality where instead of a wannabe rookie detective he’s Sherlock Jr., the greatest detective in the world. Everyone else in his life is magnified in wealth, character, and beauty as well. At the film’s close, the films even coach him in how to live.

It’s also an interesting juxtaposition to one of my favorite films, Mad Max: Fury Road. Progress in car-based action is real; but that progress has been attained at much cost and complexity, in terms of production. I also think of Tom Cruise, gaining so much acclaim for doing his own stunts in the Mission Impossible films; we can see here that is a trick as old as the movies, but again, like Mad Max, we can see how much progress there is, in terms of the scale of the stunts.

Why would someone think it’s one of the ten greatest films ever made?

To begin, the execution is flawless. I was originally thinking of rating it 4.5 stars or something, because it’s only 45 minutes. But then I thought – could you really improve anything? I don’t think so.

Beyond flawless execution, the movie is a celebration of cinema, and the kinds of things that only cinema can do. That all said, the movie also benefits from being so early. I think that if you made and released this today, for example as an extended YouTube video, with an actor the calibre of Keaton (no easy feat – he is incredible) and able to convince people you were really pulling off elaborate stunts and putting your safety on the line, then it would definitely go viral.

But I’m not sure it would be ranked among the ten best films ever made.