Le caméraman

I loved this film.

I don't give 10/10 marks lightly; I rarely give them at all. For a film to rate that highly, it must be compelling, enthralling, enchanting, a technical tour-de-force -- it must make my heart soar and tear it with pity, and leave me shaken and laughing and crying all at once -- never put a foot wrong or lose my interest for a moment... but above all, it must endure. It must be a candidate for the shelf of the classics, to stand in its own right among all others and hold its own.

A tall order for a little comedy, you might think, even with the irreplaceable imagination and grace of Buster Keaton on both sides of the camera. But for me this is the one: his last great film, his swansong perhaps, but the one that is perfection.

This is the 'perfect melding of story and humour' I dreamed would lie ahead, back when I reviewed "The General", and here they are ideally intertwined. In places it is very, very funny, on a level his feature length films arrive at far more seldom than his shorts, but it also has a fully-developed and satisfying narrative curve along timeless lines, underpinned and yet not undermined by Keaton's wry trademark lack of sentiment: virtue is rewarded, villainy confounded, and the underdog is recognised and wins through. The leading lady is no mere cipher to which to aspire, but a warm girl who believes in the hero all along and gives him his vital 'break'. The unfortunate encounter with the organ-grinder's monkey -- Buster's best ever animal co-star! -- proves not simply a one-off gag, but key to the plot; and it is this sort of coherence that gives the film as a whole its beautiful sense of shape.

The story itself is very simple, almost episodic, compared to some of Keaton's wilder offerings: boy loves girl, boy sets out day after day to prove himself and find his dream, as events conspire to frustrate him. But everything ties back. The ending echoes the beginning and every scene counts along the way, as the relationships between the principals evolve. There's even an unmissable 'singing in the rain' sequence that must surely -- surely! -- have been an influence on Gene Kelly's famous rapture of delight (and encounter with bemused policeman); the echoes are so close...

There are no great set-piece stunts and chases to take over the screen and dominate the plot, as in "Seven Chances" or "The General"; but much as I love Buster's breathtaking skills and endless acrobatic agility, I think the film actually benefits by the more integrated style. There are chases -- there are stunts -- there are classic sight gags, long-running situational humour, bittersweet instants and sheer belly laughs -- but none of them ever sideline the impetus of the character-based action. This film quite simply has *everything*, and that's why even among Keaton's work it stands out.

Buster Keaton, meanwhile, is in top form, playing perhaps the most fully-realized of his various romantic dreamers: the little street photographer with his hard-saved nest egg, ten cents a time, who longs to become a daredevil cameraman capturing the breaking news. This is classic Keaton: the fascination and frustration with machinery, the ingenuity applied and misapplied, the beauty of face and body that can express an entire universe without words, the flights of fancy and the inevitable falls.

Buster could, notoriously, "run like a jack-rabbit" for all his small size, and here his speed as well as his famous frozen poise are put to memorable use. His comic timing and inventiveness have never been better: the swimming-pool scene, harking all the way back to Arbuckle's "Coney Island" but with far greater sophistication and development, is truly hilarious and had the audience, almost crying with laughter, eating out of the palm of his hand. (The scene where, carried away by the hallowed stadium turf, he plays out an entire baseball game in his own head single-handed -- still very funny even to the English -- would doubtless have gone down a complete storm with US cinema-goers more familiar with the rules of the sport...) And yet, as always, he is not merely playing for laughs, but acting to effect. We feel for the character; rejoice with him, ache for him, applaud his resource and chuckle with sympathy over his mistakes. In a couple of his shorts, where he deliberately subverts the conventions of melodrama, he demonstrates the all-out poses of classic theatrical mime -- heartbreak, horror, despair -- with spot-on accuracy. Here, we see his own more subtle and naturalistic style. Buster had no time for high drama, but he was a player in full command of his craft, and he can create a moment's shading of emotion with the tiniest shift of face or body, and those eloquent, ever-expressive eyes.

He is a master, and for me this is perhaps his masterpiece. It's one of the films I've enjoyed most in my entire life; silent cinema in its full maturity and comedy at its timeless best. I was swept away. After seeing this I was ready to go down on my knees and worship Keaton; all I can do is hymn him in words.

If he were never again to be allowed to do anything on this creative level -- and arguably, he never was -- then this would still be a final great flowering of a unique art and vision, films that still draw crowds today... but above all perform, as perfectly as when they were first printed, all that Buster Keaton ever set out to do. These are not museum pieces or cultural artifacts of a dead age. They are, as they were created to be, cinematic works of supreme entertainment.

THE CAMERAMAN is, in a way, Buster Keaton's most heartbreaking movie. It shows what could have been, if only MGM had left him alone. Keaton had made all of his great films at an independent studio where he had total control over his work. With the help of a hand-picked creative team, he wrote, directed, designed and starred in his movies, not to mention doing all his own stunts. Buster always left himself room to improvise and revise during filming, sometimes incorporating accidents into the development of new gags. He gave little thought to financial matters; he believed in doing things right, whatever the cost in money, time or physical hardship.

In 1928, Keaton's producer Joseph Schenck dissolved his studio and turned him over to MGM, the biggest, richest, and most authoritarian of the major studios. Keaton went reluctantly, feeling he had no choice. At first, the situation didn't look too bad. For his first MGM film, THE CAMERAMAN, he kept most of his creative team, and provided the idea for the story. It had the element he considered most important: simplicity. He would play a street photographer who, smitten with a receptionist at a newsreel company, strives to become a newsreel cameraman. MGM took this idea and sent it to their writers, who complicated it with subplots, extraneous characters and needless plot twists. The studio also dispatched Keaton to film on location in New York. Frustrated by the crowds that interfered with filming, by a script he disliked, and by conflicts with his director, Keaton pleaded with Irving Thalberg to let him edit the script and shoot the rest of the film in Los Angeles. To his everlasting credit, Thalberg agreed, and director Ed Sedgwick also came around the Buster's way of working. As a result, THE CAMERAMAN became a Keaton masterpiece, one of his most mature, satisfying, and hilarious films.

Not surprisingly, some of the funniest and most inspired moments were not in the script but were improvised by Buster during filming: when he pantomimes a baseball game in Yankee Stadium, when he calmly demolishes his room in an effort to open his piggy bank, and when he attempts to change into a swimsuit in a small cubicle shared with an irascible fat man. But the level of inspiration is consistently high throughout the film. There's a beautiful sequence in which Buster runs up and down a staircase (filmed smoothly from an elevator), anticipating a phone call from his beloved Sally. When he finally gets the call, he drops the receiver and races through the city streets (in fact, Manhattan's 5th Avenue) to arrive at her house before she has hung up. There's a nightmarishly funny scene in which he loses his over-sized swimsuit in a public pool, and swims around with only his alarmed and desperate eyes above water. For the last third of the movie, there's the marvelous Josephine, an organ grinder's monkey who becomes Buster's troublesome sidekick. Not only is she one of the best animal performers you'll ever see, she's a better actor than some humans who appeared in silent movies. It's a delight to watch her riding around on Buster's shoulder, scampering up and down his body, and embracing his great stone face with her tiny hands.

THE CAMERAMAN reflects Buster's fascination with film-making and the mechanics of the camera. His character's clumsy initial efforts are a textbook of film-making mistakes. There is an appropriately spectacular finale in which Buster films a Tong war in Chinatown, imperturbable amid the swirling riot of violence. There's the most poignant moment in any Keaton film, when Buster, having rescued Sally from a boat wreck and rushed off to get aid, returns to the beach to find his rival has taken credit for the rescue and won her gratitude. His posture of utter defeat is almost unbearable, and his ultimate vindication is truly gratifying. The romance in THE CAMERAMAN is more fully developed than in most of Keaton's films; Sally is played by the exceptionally pretty Marceline Day, and unlike Buster's often prickly love interests she is unfailingly sweet and supportive. They meet when a passing parade pushes them together in a crowd, and Buster, finding his face in Marceline's hair, shuts his eyes in swooning bliss. Already we can see Buster's character shading towards the more sentimental, "sad clown" type that MGM later forced on him. But in THE CAMERAMAN he's still stoic and ingenious, and his performance is incredibly subtle and expressive, every motion fine-tuned to perfection.

I appreciated this performance all the more when I recently watched Turner Classic Movie's new DVD release. The picture quality was so much better than the old battered video print that I felt I'd never seen the film before. Alas, the print is no more complete than earlier versions. Portions have been lost to wear and tear because MGM—delighted with the film's success—played their print over and over, using it as a training film for new comedians. The savage irony is that the lesson the studio drew from this was not that Keaton did, in fact, work best when given freedom, but that Keaton was better than ever under their control. They would never again allow him such independence, and his films would rapidly deteriorate in quality. But don't think about this while you're watching THE CAMERAMAN, just enjoy one of the most elegant and perfect romantic comedies ever made.

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.

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.

Buster Keaton plays a kind hearted but bumbling cameraman trying his best to win over a clerk at MGM studios. Despite his best efforts, hilarious mishaps keep getting in the way. Among the funnier skits, A San Francisco Tong war, getting stuck in a dressing room with another man, and his constant antics with a local police officer. The film tugs your heart strings as you wish nothing but the best for this poor man. Strongly recommended if you like a light hearted and family friendly films everybody can enjoy. Fans of Charlie Chaplin and the Three Stooges will find Buster Keaton's work to be a breath of fresh air and even though it's a silent film, no sound is needed to appreciate everything this film has to offer.