Le caméraman

This was the first film Buster Keaton did at MGM after his financial backer, Joe Schenck, withdrew his support. It was also the last feature film in which Buster Keaton had creative control. In it, Buster plays a photographer making tin types on a street corner for passerbys. Some dignitaries appear, a crowd gathers around them, and as a result he is pressed up against a girl (Marceline Day) in the crowd until the dignitaries leave and the crowd disperses. She doesn't notice him, but he's instantly smitten. His face says it all.

He looks for the girl, Sally, and finds she is working as a secretary for MGM newsreels. He figures that the way to impress her and also a way to be around her all day is to become a cameraman himself. She tells him he will need to have a camera of his own if he wants a job there. So he withdraws every dime he has in the bank and buys an old run down camera. What follows are his awkward attempts to get the girl with his awkward attempts at being a newsreel cameraman.

The best way to describe The Cameraman is that it is a series of vignettes and gags that could entertain if you just watched them individually, but work together to the final conclusion. Accidental skinny dipping, a gang war, an impromptu solo baseball game, and an organ grinder monkey who made a better side kick for Buster than Jimmy Durante could have ever hoped to be are among the disparate situations that fuel the gags. And if you think that you recognize some of these gags as being lifted and placed in1935's "A Night at the Opera" with the Marx Brothers, you would be right.

MGM was a movie factory, and the fact that the actual script of The Cameraman is hard to describe drove the studio heads crazy, even though it was a box office success. But MGM learned the wrong lesson - That Buster Keaton was well suited to being a star plugged into their formulaic movie making. They stole Buster's independence and put resentment in its place, and that resentment grew with each film he did, ultimately leading to personal and professional disaster.

This is a fine comedy, nearly as good as some of the earlier masterpieces that Keaton had made on his own. It starts off rather slowly, but gets better and better as it moves along, leading up to a great finish that is fully worthy of Keaton's genius.

The setup, with Buster as a cameraman who desperately yearns to break into the newsreel business, lends itself well to visual gags and also provides Buster with the kind of hard-luck character which he always portrayed so convincingly and humorously. The early parts do move slowly at times, aside from a few good gags - but Keaton apparently once said that there was some good material in the original film that has not survived because the negatives deteriorated (this seems likely, because there are some noticeable blemishes even in what is left in the prints on the current video version). Even so, it picks up steam and gets steadily funnier as the situation and Keaton's character are developed.

And it all leads up to a typically great Keaton finale, a wonderful blend of humor, excitement, drama, and fun visuals. It's fully as satisfying as the finishes in his best films, and any Keaton fan should find it thoroughly enjoyable.

Buster Keaton and his leading lady Marceline Day shine in this deliciously romantic comedy from 1928, about a tintype cameraman who longs to become a successful newsreel photographer for MGM. Most of the female leads in Keaton's films were basically props, with not much substance, but Marceline's performance as Sally is outstanding. She had lots of chemistry going with Buster here, because her character was not shallow towards the little cameraman, who has obviously fallen head over heels in love with her. She treats him with respect and encourages his ambitions.

This sweet and touching classic silent movie deserves a first class restoration by Kino, with a further restoration of the original piano score that is so lovely ... not a new score, please! I don't know who composed the original music for this film; it is not listed in the IMD credits anywhere, but whoever the composer was, they should be recognized and honored. Best scenes in The Cameraman are the public pool scenes, where Buster tangles with a mafia type in his dressing room, then loses his bathing trunks while swimming; the Tong War scenes with Josephine the monkey (so adorable!); and the regatta scenes, where Luke (Buster) saves Sally, only to have her affection stolen from him by an unworthy competitor.

The current print available on the MGM video VHS release of The Cameraman available on Amazon.com is absolutely awful: over-exposed, with multi-thousands of defects. Do not buy it; instead wait till the much better print is shown again on Turner Classic Movies. This is the print to obtain to fully enjoy the movie, and this is the print that should be widely available for sale, so the public can rediscover this gem. Buster Keaton was simply the funniest performer who ever appeared in the movies, bar none. All his films deserve the best restorations possible.

Its sight gags may not be as funny, complex and clever as in Buster's independent films (The General, Sherlock Jr, Steamboat Bill Jr and others), but The Cameraman has probably the best romance of all his films, and is certainly one of the best directed. It has some wonderful sequences in it: the giant crane shot up and down the side of a gigantic stairway setpiece, contains probably the most impressive piece of direction. Buster's face was at its handsomest here, just before his excesses of the 30's. The version i saw had a fittingly gorgeous romantic score, which didn't hurt. Overall, The Cameraman is one of Buster's most charming, enjoyable films. And now one of my favourites.

If you've never seen a silent movie, i'd recommend this as a great place to start. Its such a welcoming, likeable movie. Visual humour does get much funnier than this - but the main source of joy in Keaton movies is Buster's irrepressibly likeable little character, here at his most likeable.

What a delightfully wacky world our Buster inhabited. This one, his first MGM feature, the beginning of the end one might safely say, is about a hapless would-be newsreel photographer trying to get a foothold within MGM, mostly in order to win the sweet girl in the front office. Lost of footage in 'Cameraman' is rather less than vintage Keaton, some jokes aren't as fresh as one would wish, but hey, listen, this is Keaton, the great stoneface. A Deity. Because other footage is simply brilliant. The pathetic pictures of Buster sitting in his little room from the crack of dawn in all his Sunday best, waiting for the girl to maybe ring. When it does ring he has to rush four stories down to get it! Or the scene where he has to share his dressingroom with another gent and their clothes and limbs get tangled up with each other. Or, most spectacularly, the (location?) scenes from the gangwar in Chinatown, dynamic, violent, imaginative. See it, love it - just just expect another 'General' or 'Sherlock' or 'Scarecrow' or 'Steamboat Bill' or 'Battling Butler'.