Keaton is a genius!
In this movie like in many others Keaton is a fantastic tumbler. Let's not forget he was on stage with his parents since he was 3 !
Here, two stories mix : fiction and reality. He is a projectionist in love. After the theft of a watch he is going to investigate both in life and dreams, as well as in the movies he shows. It is brilliant, funny, inventive (W. Allen will remember it in the Purple Rose of Cairo). The chase at the end of the movie is a grand funny and poetic moment of pure creation.
In his movies, Chaplin is a destitute, rejected by society. He tries and succeeds in making us laugh and cry. Keaton never tries to make us cry. He isn't a social character. He is somewhere else, forever. The world resists him by all means : tempests, storms, rain but also objects. His untold dream is to be free of gravity.
Keaton is a genius !
