Keaton was a quick study. Although he took time out to serve in the Army, by 1920 he had a film completely his own ready for release. Called One Week, it's the story of a groom who attempts to put together a prefab house (in seven days, hence the title). This mild domestic comedy shows that Keaton had already developed a sure sense of pacing, his canny eye for framing scenes and his unwavering commitment to getting the details right. (His Civil War chase film, The General, is widely considered the most accurate period piece American cinema has produced.) One Week also shows that Keaton had already developed the main thing that matters -- the Keaton screen character. The resolute soul in the porkpie hat is something of a cipher. In America, he was the Great Stone Face. In Spanish, Keaton was Pamplinas, a little bit of nothing. And to the French he was Malec -- the hole in a donut, the thing you name that is not there.
Keaton's screen hero, with his wide eyes and their endless gaze, is a polite and respectful creature who keeps a careful distance from others. The character is always lithe and artful, and so able to evade or escape the immediate obstacles in his path, but he finds peace and success to be ultimately elusive. Sometimes Keaton's character is wealthy (The Navigator), sometimes he's standing in bread lines (The Goat), but he's always unable to elude doom. (In the Keaton universe, there is no God and we are all doomed. The endings of Keaton's films are frequently broad jokes about death. In one, thoughts of impending nuptials lead to thoughts of happy old age together lead to thoughts of side-by-side tombstones. In another, spurned by the girl he loves, Keaton throws himself to his tormentors and certain death.)
Keaton's intrepid character is at the same time a resourceful manipulator of the objects around him and completely at the mercy of the people around him. He's likewise at the mercy of fate. Sherlock, Jr. -- one of the MFA offerings -- is a tidy example of Keaton 101: it has his typical protagonist (nice guy amidst squabbling 1920s people); standard themes (romance and sleuthing with a dash of Horatio Alger); and evidence of Keaton's rare gifts as an actor and his complex notions of film.
In Sherlock, Jr. the protagonist, simply credited as "the boy," is framed. "The girl" thinks he's stolen her father's watch. The boy follows the Keaton rule: "think slow and act fast." His thinking slow is a fantasy sequence exploring the nature of dreams and of movies, and the acting fast is a chase with motorcycles, cars pitched into lakes, speeding locomotives and, the crucial element in a Keaton chase, Keaton himself acting fast.
Disheartened by the accusation of theft, the boy shuffles off to his job as a projectionist. He dutifully starts a film, (Hearts and Pearls or The Lounge Lizard's Lost Lover), slouches sadly on his stool, sleeps, dreams and then the dreaming self (an almost transparent double-exposure Keaton) emerges. This specter tries to wake his sleeping body, fails and then walks down the aisle of the cinema. From there, he leaps into the movie. This was all taking place in 1924, and the idea of making a movie about live action characters falling into the world of film, not to mention the camera tricks necessary to make the story work, were astounding innovations. Even today, 71 years later, the dreaming boy's adventures as a great detective are all glorious and funny. In his dream of sleuthing in a top hat and tails, the boy solves the mystery of the stolen watch. However, in a final twist, when all is forgiven and the girl is ready to be taken in his arms, the boy peeks out of the projection booth, checks out the action on the movie screen, and takes his cues from the romantic scene playing there. This unique and touching wrestling with the value of illusion speaks volumes. It says, for one thing, that Keaton thought his audience was bright -- a refreshing notion for a filmmaker of any era. It also says that Keaton was thoroughly enchanted with the nature of movies. As further evidence, nearly half of his movies play with the fact of movies.
Many Keaton films are early satires of genre -- Go West, for instance, lampoons Westerns and love stories. His boxing movie, Battling Butler trades on the '20s rage for fight movies just as College muses on the new ideal of student life. But none of these movies depends upon stereotype. The intense figure in slapshoes and his gaze, not what befalls him, are at the heart of Keaton's comedy.