010: The Navigator (1924) - released 10/13/1924; viewed 7/31/05.
The 1924 Summer Olympics roll through Paris. J. Edgar Hoover becomes the new head of the FBI. Calvin Coolidge signs the Indian Citizenship Act into law. Climbers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappear on Mt. Everest. The Geneva Protocol is adopted by the League of Nations.
BIRTHS: Dr. William Sloane Coffin, Dennis Weaver, George H.W. Bush, Audie Murphy, Eva Marie Saint, Don Knotts, Buddy Hackett, Jimmy Carter, Edward D. Wood Jr. DEATHS: Franz Kafka, Joseph Conrad.
KEVIN: Okay, Sherlock Jr. was great, but The Navigator actually feels more like a real movie. Sherlock had a lot of great gags, but they were all pretty random. The Navigator has some fantastic stunts and gags that all serve a much tighter narrative than we've seen from Buster Keaton before. As we kind of saw in Our Hospitality, the action scenes in this film flow into one another and build on each other in a very cool way, like going from the underwater scenes to the endless fight with the cannibals. Also in this film, we see Keaton both at his most deadpan and at his most expressive, as he stumbles through insane situations where even he can't keep a straight face.
DOUG: I remember watching a documentary about Jackie Chan, where Chan talked about how he tells his prop department to just fill the set with whatever, and then he comes in, looks over the place, and just makes up little bits with each item. I'll bet Keaton did something similar, just coming up with little comedic beats with whatever the prop department had put in. Playing cards? Eggs? Sardine cans? Diving suit? It's all simply brilliant. I suddenly realized while watching this movie that men wore all kinds of hats during this period. You had your bowler hat (Chaplin's pick), your straw hat (Lloyd), your flat straw hat (Keaton), along with your top hat, your fedora, and a myriad of choices for the ladies. In this case, the wind keeps blowing off Keaton's hat, and he has to keep grabbing a different one. This film is filled with some of Keaton's best beats. I love when he's trying to shuffle the soaking wet playing cards; it's like watching a car crash. My favorite stuff comes with him in the diving suit. You can tell he's really under water (unlike in Thief of Bagdad), and some very inspired bits of comedy occur as he fights off two swordfish. Then of course there's the scene when his girlfriend rows back to the boat to escape the cannibals, using Keaton and his suit as a raft!
Last film: Sherlock Jr. (1924); Next film: Seven Chances (1925).
The Movie Odyssey is an exhaustive, chronological project where we watch as many milestone films as possible, starting with D.W. Griffith's Intolerance in 1916 and working our way through, year by year, one film at a time. We also write a short review for each and every film. In this project, we hope to gain a deeper understanding of the time period, the films of the era, and each film in context, while at the same time just watching a lot of great movies, most of which we never would have watched otherwise.
The 1924 Summer Olympics roll through Paris. J. Edgar Hoover becomes the new head of the FBI. Calvin Coolidge signs the Indian Citizenship Act into law. Climbers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappear on Mt. Everest. The Geneva Protocol is adopted by the League of Nations.
BIRTHS: Dr. William Sloane Coffin, Dennis Weaver, George H.W. Bush, Audie Murphy, Eva Marie Saint, Don Knotts, Buddy Hackett, Jimmy Carter, Edward D. Wood Jr. DEATHS: Franz Kafka, Joseph Conrad.
KEVIN: Okay, Sherlock Jr. was great, but The Navigator actually feels more like a real movie. Sherlock had a lot of great gags, but they were all pretty random. The Navigator has some fantastic stunts and gags that all serve a much tighter narrative than we've seen from Buster Keaton before. As we kind of saw in Our Hospitality, the action scenes in this film flow into one another and build on each other in a very cool way, like going from the underwater scenes to the endless fight with the cannibals. Also in this film, we see Keaton both at his most deadpan and at his most expressive, as he stumbles through insane situations where even he can't keep a straight face.
DOUG: I remember watching a documentary about Jackie Chan, where Chan talked about how he tells his prop department to just fill the set with whatever, and then he comes in, looks over the place, and just makes up little bits with each item. I'll bet Keaton did something similar, just coming up with little comedic beats with whatever the prop department had put in. Playing cards? Eggs? Sardine cans? Diving suit? It's all simply brilliant. I suddenly realized while watching this movie that men wore all kinds of hats during this period. You had your bowler hat (Chaplin's pick), your straw hat (Lloyd), your flat straw hat (Keaton), along with your top hat, your fedora, and a myriad of choices for the ladies. In this case, the wind keeps blowing off Keaton's hat, and he has to keep grabbing a different one. This film is filled with some of Keaton's best beats. I love when he's trying to shuffle the soaking wet playing cards; it's like watching a car crash. My favorite stuff comes with him in the diving suit. You can tell he's really under water (unlike in Thief of Bagdad), and some very inspired bits of comedy occur as he fights off two swordfish. Then of course there's the scene when his girlfriend rows back to the boat to escape the cannibals, using Keaton and his suit as a raft!
Last film: Sherlock Jr. (1924); Next film: Seven Chances (1925).
The Movie Odyssey is an exhaustive, chronological project where we watch as many milestone films as possible, starting with D.W. Griffith's Intolerance in 1916 and working our way through, year by year, one film at a time. We also write a short review for each and every film. In this project, we hope to gain a deeper understanding of the time period, the films of the era, and each film in context, while at the same time just watching a lot of great movies, most of which we never would have watched otherwise.