The 8th Annual Buster Keaton Blogathon – The Cameraman (1928)

This is a post dedicated to The 8th Annual Buster Keaton Blogathon which is taking place today over at Silent-ology

“Aren’t the Yankees playing today?” – Buster

“Sure… in St. Louis!” – Yankee Stadium Groundskeeper

Number of Times Seen – 1 (14 Mar 2022)

Brief Synopsis – An aspiring cameraman tries to capture some of the city’s greatest events in order to get hired by a local movie studio where a girl that he has fallen in love with works.

My Take on it – For this blogathon, I decided to once again take a shot in the dark and find a film featuring Buster Keaton.

The few movies of his that I’ve seen in the past really impressed me, and I hoped that once again I could be pleasantly surprised by the story and especially his performance.

This was actually an amazing film and I loved the way that they are able to blend together numerous aspects of the city together in order to make things so much fun.

Keaton is such a fun comedian to watch and is great in so many ways especially when it comes to physical comedy.

They do a great job utilizing subtitle cards to add more humor to things especially with the where/warehouse discussion.

A few other highlights in the film:

• Loved how Keaton jumped on the firetruck with great agility.
• His trip to Yankee stadium is also lots of fun especially when he meets up with a Yankee great
• The scene in the back of the car during the downpour is also lots of fun
• Loved the way they did the part with the climbing up and down the stairs
• The hustle and bustle of the bus is also great to watch as he does his best to get closer to his female companion
• The swimming pool scene gets a bit risque for its time, but they still find some hilarious ways to allude to things

This was such a great and fun film to watch and I now want to try and find some more gems from Keaton to watch in the future.

Highly Recommended!

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – According to Rudi Blesh’s biography of Buster Keaton, he came on the set the first day of shooting and, unaware of his reduced status as actor-only, began to “feel” for comedy bits and request props and characters, as he had with his own company. Director Edward Sedgwick took him aside and told Buster that he was undermining his directorial authority. Buster genuinely apologized and faded into the background. Sedgwick couldn’t get the set-ups he wanted, couldn’t get the actors to understand his direction, and eventually gave up and asked Buster to take over. As quietly as he had left, Buster regained control of the scene. Buster began to call Sedgwick “Junior” and they became fast friends. (From IMDB)

Rating – Oscar Worthy (9/10)

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