Synopsis
The Navigator (1924) is a Buster Keaton silent comedy classic you can watch online on iFILM. Rollo Treadway is a rich, helpless young man who impulsively proposes to his neighbor Betsy — gets turned down flat — and somehow ends up stranded with her on a massive, crewless ocean liner drifting at sea.
Neither of them knows how to cook, sail, or do much of anything useful. Keaton turns that premise into a series of meticulously engineered gags: a breakfast contraption that collapses on itself, underwater sequences shot with real diving gear, and physical routines timed to the frame. The ship becomes a giant prop, and Keaton treats it like a puzzle to be dismantled for laughs.
Co-directed with Donald Crisp, The Navigator stands as one of the high points of the silent era — 65 minutes with no dialogue, only comic precision that still holds up a century later. Stream The Navigator (1924) on iFILM.
Comments 0