The Cameraman (15.)
Directed by Edward Sedgwick. 1928.
Starring Buster Keaton, Marceline Day, Harold Goodwin, Sidney Bracy, Harry Gribbon. Available on Blu-ray as part of the Criterion Collection. 74 mins.
I have to say I approached this Buster Keaton with some trepidation. His second-to-last silent/ first for MGM movie is viewed either as the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning. Back then MGM was like the Jose Mourinho of comedy: they'd sign up all the most freewheeling and inventive talents and punish them for it. Laurel and Hardy and to some extent the Marx Brothers would have their wings clipped by these chartered accountants of creativity. Nobody had their careers or lives wrecked by them as completely as Buster. But in his first film for them, he's at his peak. It doesn't have the kind of epic set pieces of his previous films – no hurricanes, no runaway steam trains or boats, no house fronts falling around him – but it rattles along and is consistently amusing, arguably more so than the classics. In fact, I think I prefer it to the masterpieces.
Here Buster is a Man with a Movie Camera, out to document the news in bustling New York City and win the girl Sally (Day.) He cranks out some double exposed footage that is distinctly Vertovian but if you need a period avant-garde reference than the outfit he wears for his big date with Sally makes him look like a priest in Un Chien Andalou.
Maybe the MGM wing clipping made him focus more because everything here is there to make you laugh and there are no lulls, no wasted moments. It's also perhaps his best performance. It's a shameful admission but I did take a bit of time to really get Keaton, initially suspecting that he was more stunt man than comic. He's all comic here, as winsomely put upon as Chaplin but also underdog defiant and as funny when he's doing character gags as he is doing stunts. He's so good here that he's hilarious simply running. In The Cameraman, Buster performs the funniest sprinting scenes in cinema prior to Tom Cruise in the Mission Impossible films.
Supplements.
Audio commentary from 2004 featuring Glenn Mitchell, author of A–Z of Silent Film Comedy: An Illustrated Companion
Directed by Edward Sedgwick. 1928.
Starring Buster Keaton, Marceline Day, Harold Goodwin, Sidney Bracy, Harry Gribbon. Available on Blu-ray as part of the Criterion Collection. 74 mins.
I have to say I approached this Buster Keaton with some trepidation. His second-to-last silent/ first for MGM movie is viewed either as the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning. Back then MGM was like the Jose Mourinho of comedy: they'd sign up all the most freewheeling and inventive talents and punish them for it. Laurel and Hardy and to some extent the Marx Brothers would have their wings clipped by these chartered accountants of creativity. Nobody had their careers or lives wrecked by them as completely as Buster. But in his first film for them, he's at his peak. It doesn't have the kind of epic set pieces of his previous films – no hurricanes, no runaway steam trains or boats, no house fronts falling around him – but it rattles along and is consistently amusing, arguably more so than the classics. In fact, I think I prefer it to the masterpieces.
Here Buster is a Man with a Movie Camera, out to document the news in bustling New York City and win the girl Sally (Day.) He cranks out some double exposed footage that is distinctly Vertovian but if you need a period avant-garde reference than the outfit he wears for his big date with Sally makes him look like a priest in Un Chien Andalou.
Maybe the MGM wing clipping made him focus more because everything here is there to make you laugh and there are no lulls, no wasted moments. It's also perhaps his best performance. It's a shameful admission but I did take a bit of time to really get Keaton, initially suspecting that he was more stunt man than comic. He's all comic here, as winsomely put upon as Chaplin but also underdog defiant and as funny when he's doing character gags as he is doing stunts. He's so good here that he's hilarious simply running. In The Cameraman, Buster performs the funniest sprinting scenes in cinema prior to Tom Cruise in the Mission Impossible films.
Supplements.
Audio commentary from 2004 featuring Glenn Mitchell, author of A–Z of Silent Film Comedy: An Illustrated Companion
- Spite Marriage (1929), Buster Keaton’s next feature for MGM following The Cameraman, in a new 2K restoration, with a 2004 commentary by film historians John Bengtson and Jeffrey Vance
- Time Travelers, a new documentary by Daniel Raim featuring interviews with Bengtson and film historian Marc Wanamaker
- So Funny It Hurt: Buster Keaton & MGM, a 2004 documentary by film historians Kevin Brownlow and Christopher Bird
- The Motion Picture Camera (1979), a documentary by A.S.C. cinematographer and film preservationist Karl Malkames, in a 4k restoration
- New interview with James L. Neibaur, author of The Fall of Buster Keaton: His Films for MGM, Educational Pictures, and Columbia
- PLUS: An essay by film critic Imogen Sara Smith
