The Navigator (1924)

Buster Keaton in his prime days of producing feature length films in Hollywood was averaging two films a year. Granted they were short features, but still to produce two quality films a year was quite a thing to do, but then again it was the silent era, so sound recording and editing was not an issue to produce a motion picture. But this king of comedy was continuing to make people laugh as he found numerous innovative gags each calender year that kept entertaining audiences with every trip to the cinema.

For his second film of 1924 Keaton purchased a large ship that was headed to the scrap pile and used it as his latest prop given the title The Navigator. The film doesn't provide much substance, as the case would be for most of his pictures, but rather it would be a loose story hinged on the gags that Buster would make up and perform with the setting he was given, and in this case it would life alone on a large ship that was the center of this Keaton classic.

The story is very simple and rather episodic, about a rich young man that finds his way to being caught on a boat sent adrift on the ocean with the rich girl across the street, whom he has a liking to. We follow their misadventures as these two skill-less beings learn to live alone on this large ship caught in the middle of the ocean. The second half of the film contains the attack from native cannibals as the ship has run aground in shallow water. When all hope seems lost as there is nowhere else to go as the cannibals close in on them they are surprisingly rescued by a submarine that comes up right from under their swimming feet in the sea.

The film is full of laughs as one would assume from any Keaton movie. Gags from Keaton and his female companion performing many near misses with each other, to their mishaps in learning how to cook for themselves, to Keaton sword fighting with a swordfishes, to his mishaps with deep sea diving, to the moment of rescue where Buster sends the sub spinning after a kiss from his lovely lady.

Though this particular picture doesn't have any innovative movie making techniques or large stunts performs by Keaton that grabs the eye in his other films, we must not forget he is still very active in this picture, performing physically difficult actions with the greatest of ease to make us laugh. This may not be the best of his work, but to say that means that what would be considered his best work must be great, because this film is still very entertaining for those looking for a good laugh.