The Cameraman

Director: Edward Sedgwick Edward Sedgwick

Overview

This is one of the last films from Buster Keaton's classic period, before the coming of sound and interference from MGM spoiled his work and softened his popularity. The Great Stone Face portrays Luke Shannon, a "tintype" portrait photographer who develops a serious crush on Sally (Marceline Day), a beautiful woman who works as a secretary for MGM's newsreel department. Luke's primary rival for Sally's affections is a cameraman for the company, so Luke decides to sign to the newsreel department in hopes of impressing her. However, his hand with a movie camera is not especially sure at first; he mistakenly double exposes a reel of film that results in battleships sailing down Broadway, while his attempts to get footage of a Tong battle seem more successful until an organ grinder's monkey runs off with his film. Luke gets the axe before long, but he's not about to give up, and he tries to find another way to impress his lady love. This was Keaton's first film under a new contract with MGM, and director Edward Sedgwick for the most part allowed Keaton to stick to the creative formula of his best work. However, that would soon change, and many Keaton aficionados consider The Cameraman to be his last truly important work.

Product Details

Release Date:	06/16/2020
UPC:	0715515247313
Original Release:	1928
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W]
Sound:	[silent]
Time:	1:09:00
Sales rank:	4,462

Special Features

New 4k digital restoration; Score composed and conducted by Timothy Brock and performed by the orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologno and I Virtuosi Italiani in 2020, presented in uncompressed stereo; Audio Commentary from 2004 featuring Glenn Mitchell, author of A-Z of Silent Film Comedy; New 2k restoration of Buster Keaton's Spite Marriage (1929), with a 2004 Audio Commentary by film historians John Bengston and Jeffrey Vance; Time Travelers, a new documentary by Daniel Raim featuring interviews with Bengston and film historian Marc Wanamaker; So Funny It Hurt: Buster Keaton & MGM, A 2004 documentary by film historian Kevin Brownlow and filmmaker Christopher Bird; The Motion Picture Camera, a 1979 documentary; New interview with James L. Neibaur, author of The Fall of Buster Keaton; Plus: An essay by film critic Imogen Sara Smith and a chapter from Keaton's 1960 autobiography, cowritten with Charles Samuels

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Buster Keaton	Luke Shannon
Marceline Day	Sally Richards
Harold Goodwin	Harold Stagg
Sidney Bracey	Editor
Harry Gribbon	Officer Hennessey
William Irving	A Photographer
Dick Alexander	The Big Sea Lion
Edward S. Brophy	Man in Dressing Room
Vernon Dent	Man in Tight Bathing Suit
Ray Cooke	Office Worker

Technical Credits

Richard Schayer

Edward Sedgwick	Director
Clyde Bruckman	Original Story
David Cox	Costumes/Costume Designer
Reggie Lanning	Cinematographer
Elgin Lessley	Cinematographer
Lew Lipton	Original Story
Richard Schayer	Screenwriter
Basil Wrangell	Editor
Hugh Wynn	Editor

Editorial Reviews

In his first film for MGM and his last important work, Buster Keaton once again mined the comic possibilities of filmmaking. Blending studio sets with documentary footage and location shooting in New York, Keaton's adventures as a hapless yet inadvertently avant-garde Hearst newsreel man amply demonstrated his signature athleticism and visual cleverness, as he films a Tong War in Chinatown, plays baseball with himself in an empty Yankee Stadium, and gets a little too involved in Charles Lindbergh's tickertape parade. An improvised situation involving a shared Coney Island dressing room and bathing suit showcased Keaton's well-honed gifts for comic timing and unscripted creativity, but that work situation was not to last at bottom line-fixated MGM. Even though The Cameraman was a success, MGM demanded that Keaton give up his looser, off-the-cuff working style and stick to prepared shooting scripts; his penchant for dangerous stunts did not find favor either. With his comic methods curtailed after 1928, The Cameraman was the final film made exactly as Keaton wished--and, perhaps not surprisingly, his last great feature.

All Movie Guide - Lucia Bozzola