With accompaniment by Morgan Cooke
Throughout his movie career, Buster Keaton celebrated and drew on his long years touring the country as a vaudeville performer, while at the same time experimenting with the technical possibilities of film like a child with a new toy. Nowhere is this combination of elements more pronounced than in Sherlock Jr., a simple tale of a theatre projectionist’s efforts to prove himself innocent of the theft of a watch and thereby win the hand of his sweetheart. In the middle of this plot, Keaton and his writers present a dream sequence in which the projectionist finds himself transported into the film he has been projecting on-screen. He becomes the world-famous detective Sherlock Jr., a man who can solve any case and who is capable of amazing feats of physical daring. As in all his films, Keaton is careful to demonstrate that he, and not some stand-in, is doing all of the stunts. That, as well as his habit of staging his stunts frontally (to assure the audience that no camera trickery is involved), makes those moments when he does play with the camera all the more wondrous. - Gráinne Humphreys, Jameson Dublin International Film Festival
Morgan Cooke is composer in residence and performer with Branar Drámaíochta, who do puppet theatre for children. Morgan has been performing live, improvised soundtracks to silent movies since 2009, starting with Metropolis. Morgan is also a voiceover artist, and worked on TG4’s version of Jim Henson’s Fraggle Rock.
