Monday Minute
No. 7 | January 11, 2010

At the Movies

When Norma Desmond says, “It’s the pictures that got small,” she’s not talking about the size of the screen.  Yet I think it’s fair to say you’d never catch her watching a movie on a smartphone.  But you can.  You can take your movies with you and watch them wherever you go—that is, if you don’t mind watching on a 3.5-inch screen.  Hard to imagine watching Avatar that way, or any other film you want to see, but people are mobile these days, and movies are too.  (And if you’re ever stuck in an elevator for hours, you’ll find the new technology especially handy.)

Given the choice, I’d still rather watch a movie the old-fashioned way—in a theater.  There’s something special about seeing a movie on the big screen, in the dark, with a roomful of strangers.  In Norma’s day, the picture house was the only game in town.  Now we have many alternatives, but for new releases—or, say, the IMAX 3D experience—the theater is still the place to go.

We’re used to seeing movies in theaters, and it’s no surprise we sometimes see theaters in movies.  Generations of filmmakers have spent countless hours at the movies.  The theater for them is not just another setting—it’s personal.  It may have been their window to another world, or their sanctuary, or where they learned to dream.  Whatever it may be, the theater is a place for which moviemakers hold a certain fondness, as you can see in the movies we’ll feature this week.  (It’s not likely the smartphone will be getting the same treatment on film anytime soon.)

Our theme this week
Movies set in movie theaters

Sherlock Jr.

The essentials
Sherlock Jr. is a gem of a comedy from Buster Keaton, one of his best.  Made in 1924, the movie runs 44 minutes, about double the length of Keaton’s two-reelers, though shorter than the features he’d be making later in the decade (e.g., The General, The Cameraman, Steamboat Bill Jr.).  Not a second is wasted.

For Keaton, the movie theater is the place of dreams.  (Literally.)  Keaton’s film projectionist falls asleep during a movie and soon he sees himself as part of the action.  He leaps from the stage into the scene onscreen.  An unwelcome intruder, he’s tossed out a moment later.  When he jumps back into the movie, the scene changes and he’s no longer in the parlor he thought he was entering into but outside the front door.  He steps off the porch and falls in a garden.  He sits on a bench and rolls over in a busy street.  He walks down the street and almost falls off a cliff.  He looks over the edge and finds himself standing between two lions.  And so it goes, from one improbable shot to another.  The sequence may not make complete narrative sense, but then dreams often don’t.  It all adds up to an astonishing moment of movie magic served up by one of the masters.

Sherlock Jr. has plenty of sight gags and trick shots.  There’s slapstick, romance, and action, with Keaton playing dual roles, the “world’s greatest detective” and the hapless hero.  In the end, he wins his love, taking cues from the movie playing in the theater.  As that film closes, so does Keaton’s, finishing with an amusing visual punch line.

Beyond the final credits
Silent stars such as Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd were more than just comedians.  They were action heroes too, and they often performed their own stunts.  The common use of stunt doubles came later.  In Sherlock Jr., Keaton hurt himself badly during one stunt at a rail yard water tank.  He suffered painful headaches for days afterward, yet continued to work on the film.  He didn’t learn until years later that he had in fact fractured his neck.  (The sequence takes place right after the 15:00 mark in the film, which you can watch at the link below.)

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Sherlock Jr. (1924)
Buster Keaton

Sherlock Jr. (44:00)
 

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Quote of Note
“Wait a minute,  haven’t I see you before?  I know your face.”
“Get out.”
“You’re Norma Desmond.  You used to be in silent pictures.  You used to be big!”
“I am still big.  It’s the pictures that got small.”
— Joe Gillis (William Holden) and Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson),  Sunset Boulevard (1950)

…58…59…60.