The Navigator (1924)

(On Cable TV, August 2019) Part of the charm of Buster Keaton’s early productions is simply enjoying the flow of his films as they run from one imaginative set-piece to another, never minding the plot or the contrivances required to get there. So it is that with The Navigator, there’s quite a bit of plot business to attend to before landing our lead couple aboard a ship headed to nowhere, after which they learn to live at sea, repair the boat, land on an island filled with (what else?) bloodthirsty cannibals, and fend off their attempts to board the ship. It’s not quite top-notch Keaton, but there are some ideas here and some of the gags land solidly—whether it’s swordfish-to-swordfish combat, learning to cope with shipboard equipment or repelling attackers. An interesting moment, from a cinematographic perspective, has subtitles (in 1924! Yes!) to represent music in-time with a record playing. History notes that Keaton essentially bought the ship on which the film was shot (which had a cursed history of deporting Russians from America) and could do anything he wanted with it, up to sinking it if he wanted. The rest of the film was built around the prop. As a result, it doesn’t quite have the overarching plot of Keaton’s better films (the ending is noticeably weak), nor the grandiose over-the-top gags found in many of those same better movies, but even an average Keaton is still worth watching today.