this weekend i saw two silent movies, which is two more than i’ve seen in the last ten years. charlie chaplin’s city lights and buster keaton’s sherlock jr. then i got to comparing, naturally.

no kid growing up in india in the 80/90s can claim not to be familiar with chaplin’s movies/shorts. they were kind of hard of miss since we had all of two (but sufficiently entertaining) channels to choose from (DD1 and DD2). chaplin does tragicomedy in a way that six year old me couldn’t fully understand so i never really enjoyed it. relatively grown-up me saw a love story between a blind flower girl and a homeless man with the worst luck ever. even the ending was subdued. what a downer. but beyond the movie, i guess i’m also tired of the tramp character, which always made me uncomfortable. 

but this was my first keaton jaunt. and i’ve got to say, the camera tricks (before they were called special effects) were spectacular on the big screen for which they were intended. buster keaton’s physical act is sharp and that dead-pan face is such a game changer for a format that depended on big expressive gestures for funny. also, keaton’s kind of attractive. but that’s…not important now. i don’t know if this is a weird thing to notice but the title cards in sherlock jr. were also wittier and used more wisely. 

anyway, keaton wins. below is a spoilerific “best of” from sherlock jr.