The Navigator (1924)

The Navigator (Buster Keaton & Donald Crisp, 1924)

Wildly enteraining and very funny, Buster Keaton's The Navigator has its place in the Silent masterpieces with his The General and Sherlock Jr. A simple story with efficient gags makes The Navigator the major influence on modern day cartoons. Take every Tex Avery, Chuck Jones like-alike animated feature and compare it to any Keaton picture and you'll have a copy paste. Seriously, the Looney Tunes were so openly influenced by him that they should gave him a paycheck.

Simple minded only son of a rich family, Rollo (Keaton) decides to marry his girlfriend. Slight change of plans, she rejects him but he decides to go on his wedding trip anyway. He boards on the wrong ship and by a chance he is alone on the deriving ship with the girl who rejected him at the first place. There begins many gags and jokes on board.

In a Keaton picture, the story is a pretext to stunts and jokes. In The Navigator there are fewer stunts and more jokes. Compared to a Chaplin film where the story is the main part of the film. I won't compare them again please read my precedent reviews of their films to fully understand my propos on that topic. The Navigator is a masterpiece of the Silent era.