The Navigator. 1924. USA. Directed by Buster Keaton and Donald Crisp. Screenplay by Clyde Bruckman, Joseph A. Mitchell, Jean C. Havez. With Buster Keaton, Kathryn McGuire, Frederick Vroom. Preserved and restored by The Museum of Modern Art and Lobster Films. 69 min.
Buster Keaton’s biggest commercial hit originated with a prop: the 5,000-ton decommissioned ocean liner Buford, spotted in a San Francisco shipyard by Keaton’s technical director Fred Gabourie and purchased for the production. The film was built around what the ship could do. A useless young millionaire (Keaton) and the equally sheltered girl who rejected his marriage proposal (Kathryn McGuire) find themselves the only passengers aboard the drifting vessel, and the comedy proceeds from their absolute inability to manage anything—cooking, sleeping, navigation—at a scale designed for a crew of hundreds. Keaton and his gag writers Clyde Bruckman, Joseph A. Mitchell, and Jean C. Havez developed the situation methodically: domestic incompetence gives way to mechanical improvisation, then to an extended underwater sequence shot off Catalina Island in a genuine deep-sea diving suit.
The ship itself becomes the film’s real subject, a closed system whose corridors, galleys, and decks Keaton maps with the spatial logic that distinguishes his best work. McGuire, a former Sennett bathing beauty who also appeared opposite Keaton in Sherlock Jr. the same year, is given more to do here than most Keaton leading ladies, and the film depends on their pairing as a functioning comic unit. Donald Crisp received a co-director credit, though Keaton later said he dismissed Crisp partway through the shoot when the dramatic specialist turned gagman overnight.
Restored by The Museum of Modern Art and Lobster Films from the only known nitrate print, from MoMA’s archive.