The Play House

One Buster Keaton on screen isn't enough here. The Play House (1921), a silent comedy short you can watch online on iFILM, opens with a lowly stagehand dozing off into a strange dream: a vaudeville theater where the conductor, every musician in the pit, all the performers and the entire audience are played by Keaton himself. In a single shot he appears nine times at once.

The effect runs on painstaking multiple-exposure work, frame by frame — close to sorcery for 1921. Then the dream breaks and the second half kicks in, with the same hapless stagehand wrecking the backstage, a trained monkey breaking loose, and a simple scene change spiraling into disaster.

Keaton co-directed the 24-minute film with Edward F. Cline, sharing the frame with Virginia Fox and Joe Roberts. People remember The Play House for the nine-Keatons trick, but it's also a showcase for that stone-faced calm he keeps in the middle of chaos. A perfect entry point to silent slapstick if you want to see why Keaton sits beside Chaplin. Stream The Play House (1921) online on iFILM.