Seven Chances and Sherlock Jr. (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Dec 30, 2024
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Buster KeatonRelease Date(s)
1925/1924 (November 19, 2024)Studio(s)
Metro-Goldwyn Pictures/Metro Pictures (Kino Classics)- Film/Program Grade: A
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: A
Review
Buster Keaton got his start in show business as a child star in vaudeville. This led to a series of successful two-reel comedies that in turn led to feature films, including The General (1926) and Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928). Two films from this peak period, now available as a double bill, are Seven Chances (1925) and Sherlock, Jr. (1924).
In Seven Chances, Keaton plays Jimmy Shannon, a young man enamored of Mary (Ruth Dwyer), who can’t summon the courage to propose to her. Meanwhile, Jimmy and his business partner learn that their firm is in financial trouble. A lawyer appears at their office and, believing he’s about to deliver a summons, Jimmy does all he can to evade him. The lawyer, however, is the bearer of good news—Jimmy’s grandfather has bequeathed him $7 million, more than enough to pay the creditors and save the business. The persistent lawyer at length chases the partners down and they learn, to their relief, about the inheritance. But there’s a catch. Jimmy will inherit the money only if he is married by 7 P.M. on his 27th birthday, which happens to be that very day.
Spurred to action, Jimmy proposes and Mary accepts despite his puzzling insistence on marrying so hastily, then turns him out when he tells her why he must marry “any” girl by the deadline. With the clock ticking, a whirlwind search for a bride ensues. Jimmy’s various attempts to snare himself a bride all fail until the newspapers get hold of his story. Scores, then hundreds, of women hoping to sit in the lap of lifelong luxury, converge upon the dismayed suitor.
The second half of the film is an elaborate, ever-escalating chase as eager women of all ages, shapes, and sizes decked out in whatever will pass for a bridal veil pursue Jimmy through a cornfield, amid a beekeeper’s hives, over steep hills, across a chasm, and into a river.
Keaton, known for his elaborate comic set-ups, doesn’t disappoint in Seven Chances. Once the pursuit commences, the pace never lets up, with one slapstick moment following another with breakneck speed. The biggest sight gag features a construction crane mounted on a railroad car that swings Keaton in circles high in the air. Keaton does the stunt himself, putting life and limb in danger. Such personal daring is on exhibit in many of his other shorts and features, and would be one of his trademarks.
Some of the jokes, by today’s standards, are not politically correct, but for the most part, the film offers plenty of laughs combined with astonishment at how willing Keaton was to set up elaborate and dangerous bits for the ultimate laugh. Keaton was making films during the same period as Charlie Chaplin, so this may have been a way for Keaton to differentiate himself from Chaplin and establish himself as America’s foremost athletic comedian.
Sherlock, Jr., Keaton’s third feature, finds the comedian portraying the projectionist in a small-town movie theater who dreams of becoming a detective. While a melodrama about a stolen pearl necklace runs through the projector, he imagines himself as the world’s greatest detective. The faces in the film are familiar since the other actors play multiple roles. As the projectionist dozes off, his dream spirit rises and enters the movie screen to solve the case. The background on the dream screen changes with disconcerting speed and Keaton’s napping projectionist finds himself in one exotic location after another in a series of rapid dissolves.
There are several excellent set pieces in Sherlock, Jr. that boggle the mind, particularly when one remembers this was well before the days of CGI. At a billiards table sabotaged with an explosive ball, Keaton takes one trick shot after another and clears the table except for the lethal ball. The entire table is shown in the frame along with Keaton wielding the cue, so it’s clear that he’s making these shots himself. He mapped out the shots beforehand and practiced until he mastered them. The result is funny, yes, but also amazing. In another sequence, Keaton runs to the right of the screen over the top of a train as the train moves to the left. During a chase sequence, a bridge collapses a split second after Keaton reaches the other side. When a convertible car he’s driving splashes into a lake, he calmly raises the canvas top straight up to serve as a sail and catch the breeze. In another example of Keaton’s acrobatic ability, he vaults onto the handlebars of a motorcycle and, oblivious that the driver has been knocked off, keeps on going. In a scene in which we’re allowed to see the cutaway of a building, Keaton jumps out of a window, somersaults, and in an instant dons a planted disguise. This is all performed in one, uninterrupted shot.
A favorite scene of mine shows Keaton on top of a railroad crossing gate. His weight causes the gate to come down just in time to place him in a passing car. The speed of the gate’s descent, the speed of the car, and the proper angle all had to be worked out precisely for the gag to work. It reminded me of the scene in Singin’ in the Rain in which Gene Kelly’s double jumps from a moving trolley into a car driven by Debbie Reynolds. Timing is everything.
Sherlock, Jr. is a study in surrealism as two parallel worlds unfold and ultimately meet. The film plays with this theme throughout, peppering the story with lots of slapstick and sight gags along the way. Though it didn’t fare as well as other Keaton features during the 1920s, it has been singled out in recent years as ahead of its time in its use of cinematic techniques. Its fast pace keeps things moving briskly and the visual gags still impress.
Seven Chances was shot by directors of photography Byron Houck and Elgin Lessley on black & white and 2-strip Technicolor film with spherical lenses, finished photochemically, and presented in the aspect ratio of 1.33:1. According to information at the start, the film was restored by Lobster Films in association with Blackhawk Films partly from a safety dupe negative from the Blackhawk collection preserved at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and partly from an incomplete nitrate 35 mm print in the Lobster Films collection. The scan and restoration were accomplished by Lobster Films, Paris in 2022. Seven Chances was previously released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber in 2010. The opening credits and first sequence in 2-strip Technicolor have a somewhat faded look but make for an interesting way to show the passage of time as the seasons change while Jimmy repeatedly hesitates to woo Mary. The balance of the film is tinted amber. The recent restoration has brought the print to life, and it looks great.
Sherlock, Jr. was also shot by cinematographers Byron Houck and Elgin Lessley using black & white 35 mm film with spherical lenses, finished photochemically, and presented in the aspect ratio of 1.33:1. Silent films are often plagued by embedded dirt specks, scratches, and speckling, but this print is clean and beautifully detailed. The precisely-set up dissolves in the film-within-the-film are especially impressive. Double exposure shows Keaton’s dream spirit rising from his sleeping body. Though Keaton himself drives a motorcycle while sitting on its handlebars, the camera speed was slowed in order to make it look as if he’s going faster. Wide shots are used to show the full scope of elaborately staged gags, and close-ups are rare. In the final scene, Keaton and his girl are framed in the window of the projection booth to suggest the shape of the movie theater screen.
Both Seven Chances and Sherlock, Jr. feature newly-recorded scores by Robert Israel. Two audio options are included: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and 2.0 Stereo. The sound is rich. In Israel’s score for Seven Chances, he includes the Gershwin tunes Someone to Watch Over Me, Lady Be Good, and Looking for the Boy.
Bonus materials on the Blu-ray release from Kino Classics include the following:
- Audio Commentary for Seven Chances by Adam Nayman
- Audio Commentary for Sherlock, Jr. by Matt Singer
- A Brideless Groom (16:48)
- How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns (9:45)
Commentary (Seven Chances) – Film critic Adam Nayman notes that Seven Chances was not one of Keaton’s favorite films. Working with a stage-bound setting, he felt restrained and was at odds with his producer. Only the prologue of the film was shot in 2-strip Technicolor, likely to mark the changing seasons. Delayed gratification is common in Keaton’s films and he also finds himself in nightmarish situations. The Keatonesque “near miss” is at play in Seven Chances as he repeatedly just misses getting the good news about his inheritance. The film was released when Keaton was at the peak of his stardom. He owed money to his producer and there was tension in the making of the picture. The narrative is a cliche, old-fashioned even when the story was produced as a play. For a few key dissolves, surveying equipment was used to make precise measurements between Keaton sitting in a car and the camera. In a “motif of escalation,” countless women converge on Jimmy, hoping to become his bride. Realism gives way to surrealism in terms of the exaggerated numbers of women and the extent they go to catch Jimmy. These scenes are ironic and parody a Hollywood casting call or audition. While being aggressively pursued, Jimmy just wants to get to his true love. Buster Keaton was an inspiration for the Warner Bros. animated character Wile E. Coyote.
Commentary (Sherlock, Jr.) - Film critic Matt Singer points out that Sherlock, Jr. was a Metro picture. Metro was one of the studios that merged to become MGM. The film was not a huge popular or critical hit and was, in fact, the lowest grosser of Keaton’s 1920s features. It’s set in two different worlds, the real world and the film world. A running gag in the film involves disguises and double identities, with actors taking on duplicate roles. Singer points out that a $1 box of candy that Keaton buys for his girl would equate to $18 today. Keaton often cast himself as a fellow courting a young woman of a more respectable position than his own. He was set up to meet the challenge and win their hearts. Keaton previewed Sherlock, Jr. three times, each time cutting more and more footage based on audiences’ reactions. His filming ratio was 15:1. There’s no padding. In later years, Keaton often gave different answers about the production to the same question. Fatty Arbuckle, whose acting career was destroyed by a scandal, started as the film’s director but was fired after only three days because he was irritable and lost his temper with the cast. Keaton was adept at exploiting the medium of cinema, creating scenes that never could have been done on stage. The film shows the power that cinema holds. Sherlock, Jr. contains some of Keaton’s greatest gags performed without tricky editing, and is also a showcase for old vaudeville gags. On a personal note, commentator Singer says he’s often put off by music that accompanies silent films, finding it distracting, but he admires the soundtrack for Sherlock, Jr..
A Brideless Groom – This 1947 Three Stooges two-reeler stars Moe and Shemp Howard and Larry Fine. Moe informs Shemp that his Uncle Caleb died and left him $500,000, but he must be married within 48 hours. Shemp makes several phone calls, proposing marriage to one female acquaintance after another, but all turn him down. After Moe and Larry spiff up Shemp, he tries his luck proposing marriage in person, only to be rebuffed over and over. However, when word gets out about the inheritance, a slew of women beat their way to Shemp, hoping to be his bride and enjoy the benefits of half a million dollars. In typical Three Stooges fashion, there’s lots of broad slapstick.
How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns – Directed by Edwin S. Porter (The Great Train Robbery) in 1904, this short shows a distinguished gentlemen placing a flower in his lapel and going out. Almost immediately, women start coming up to him until there’s a huge crowd. He runs away, but they’re hot on his tail, pursuing him in city streets, over a foot bridge, through fields, over sand dunes, through bushes and trees, and over a fence. To get away, he jumps into a river, the women looking at him longingly from the shore until one determined woman wades out to embrace him.
The two features in this collection showcase different aspects of Keaton. Seven Chances illustrates how a comic chase is built and sustained, with ever-surprising gags occurring along the way. Sherlock, Jr. features Keaton experimenting with film technique to create images that are only possible on film. The two pictures place comedy foremost, and both still deliver their intended laughs while also shining a light on their elaborate planning and execution.
- Dennis Seuling