The Cameraman is regarded by many scholars as the last great Buster Keaton film. It was the last movie he made where he had a majority of creative control over the project, even though his new contract at MGM meant the studio was already causing problems (there are no dangerous stunts). But, to my surprise, I found the film to be very good, but not one of Keaton's masterpieces.
The director's credit is given to Edward Sedgewick, but it's pretty obvious who the auteur of this movie is. I have a feeling that, like most of his pictures, Keaton handled the scenes that he felt were important, and left some of the more basic expository stuff to his buddy Edward. But unlike so many of his work, this does not flow like a perfectly constructed Bach composition. It seems more like a collection scenes, strung together by a very basic plot outline.
The basic plot involves still photographer named Luke Shannon (Keaton) who develops a crush on a girl named Sally (Marceline Day) who works as a secretary at the MGM newsreel office. In an attempt to impress her, he goes to a pawn shop and trades for a movie camera, and attempts to find newsworthy subjects to film.
Despite the title, most of the movie involves Luke's attempts to win Sally- obsessively waiting by the phone, trying to share a bus ride when only one of them has a ticket, and so on. Much of this is funny, but it's not sweet in the way that Keaton's relationships to women are in pictures like Seven Chances or Steamboat Bill, Jr.
The best scenes in the picture involve Luke trying to use his camera and making technical errors that cause his films to be unintentionally hilarious, such as a ship floating down a New York street. Every one who has ever made a film can identify with the scene where Luke watches his footage dumbfounded.
But this movie is not as well as edited or structured as the director's (and I'm not talking about Sedgewick's) other work. The movie doesn't really lead anywhere, and many of the bits could be randomly place throughout the movie and not make much difference.
At the risk of sounding like a total Keaton sycophant, this is not what we expect from the great stone face. For Harold Lloyd, it would be second best film of his career. For Chaplin, it would be his third or fourth best. But coming from arguably the greatest filmmaker of his era, a genius on par with his contemporaries Griffith and Eisenstien, The Cameraman is a little disappointing. But is it still worth seeing? Most definitely.
The Cameraman (1928)