Sherlock Jr.

To conclude this tribute, during the Venice Carnival, to Buster Keaton, we have Sherlock Jr., one of the most extraordinary silent films ever made. Here Keaton is a young projectionist who longs to become a detective. While showing a film about the theft of a pearl necklace, he falls asleep and dreams that he enters the film as the world’s greatest detective, Sherlock Jr.

In employing two narratives, one imagined, the other set in its own actuality, the film explores the fine line between reality and fiction. The film presents a whirl of inventions that to this day we find amazing in their technical audacity and poetical qualities. All this will, of course, be accompanied and highlighted by a delightful programme of French piano pieces of the Romantic era.