The Cameraman (1928)

Buster Keaton may be my favorite silent star. He doesn't attain as much pathos as Charlie Chaplin, but he sure knows comedy, often with impressive stunts, and projects more innocence than Harold Lloyd. I hadn't seen any of those giants since I started this blog, so it was time for another go.

Here Buster (identified only by the same nickname) has been barely making ends meet as a portrait photographer. One customer, Sally, catches his eye, and he learns that she's a secretary for MGM Newsreels. That makes him want a job there, but he has too little experience with the kind of cameras they use. Sally still finds him endearing enough to date and even slip an advance notice of a story to cover, but Buster has competition, both professional and romantic, in the form of a handsome jerk at the company.

The plot gets thicker than it sounds so far. One recurring subplot involves a policeman who happens to keep seeing Buster at bad times and comes to believe he's not so much stupid as fit to be committed. In truth, Buster's only a little foolish; mostly he's klutzy, at least when lovesick, with unreliable luck. At one improbable point, that luck puts a literal monkey on his back, for better and worse. (I'd say better for the audience, if only because the monkey's cute.)

Like other Keaton silents I could name, this one relies pretty heavily on some premises that wouldn't work for a story set in the present. Buster starts out with a camera that's badly dated even for the time, and his would-be boss expects him to buy a better one on his own dime -- or dimes, as the literal coins are his main form of payment. Then there's the difficulty of long-range communications.

As you may have guessed, this is an MGM movie -- the first for Keaton, who went on to wish he'd listened to the advice of both Chaplin and Lloyd not to sacrifice his indie status. The difference it makes to the film itself, apart from the name of the news corporation, is not immediately obvious. It does mean fewer unscripted sequences than before. Ironically, I tended to find the known improvised parts too long and monotonous, bordering on hackneyed, without advancing the story or revealing anything new.

I tentatively add the "politically incorrect" label because of the most action-packed scene: A Chinatown parade becomes a battlefield for the Tongs. They aren't really played up to the point of caricature, but the lack of clearly good Asian characters for balance may bother viewers. Me, I find it a relief after the Black caricatures in some other Keaton works, which is easily my biggest complaint about them.

I'm not sure where I'd rank TC with respect to the rest of Keaton's films that I've seen, but it is a worthy inclusion. For all the familiar elements, I didn't always see things coming. I had my chuckles as well as moments of due pity. But perhaps I should avoid later entries on his MGM contract.