Sherlock Jr. Dream Sequence

Before you begin your first writing assignment in this course, I wanted to spend a little time describing one of the most important scenes in Sherlock Jr.: the dream sequence in the cinema. This may help contextualize some of the terms that were discussed this week. 

Still from Sherlock Jr. from Youtube Links to an external site.

When Buster Keaton's character falls asleep at the projector, his head is placed into the projector. This blocking is significant. It appears that the images from his dreams are feeding into the projector and projecting onto the film frame.

After falling asleep, he gets up and walks into the film frame. By doing this, Sherlock Jr. enters the filmic world, or the “diegisis." This is also a visual representation of the realist film theory concept of cinema acting as a window into reality. You'll learn more about this theory in the next few weeks. 

When he enters the film world, he becomes part of a sequence of images in vastly different locations. In early cinema, many of the films produced for Nickelodeons were travelogues that transported viewers to new places in the world. In the context of this scene, Sherlock Jr. is transported to disparate environments through his interaction with the film frame. 

This scene also illustrates the power of editing and references soviet montage theory. This was a theory developed by filmmakers like Sergei Eisenstein who described editing, or montage, as the clashing of images.

In summation, this surrealist scene is a love letter from Keaton to the power of illusory nature of cinema and how it has influenced him as a filmmaker. In your reading for next week, you’ll be learning a bit more about the illusory power of cinema through philosophy that could connect back to this scene.

Continue on to complete your first writing assignment of this course on a short scene from Sherlock Jr. 

--->