Themes: Looking For Love, Love Triangles, Nothing Goes Right
Main Cast: Buster Keaton, Marceline Day, Harold Goodwin, Sidney Bracey, Harry Gribbon
Release Year: 1928
Country: US
Run Time: 8rl minutes
Plot
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. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
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. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
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
Credit
David Cox - Costume Designer, Edward Sedgwick - Director, Hugh Wynn - Editor, Basil Wrangell - Editor, Reggie Lanning - Cinematographer, Elgin Lessley - Cinematographer, Joseph Farnham - Intertitle Writer, Clyde Bruckman - Screen Story, Lew Lipton - Screen Story, Richard Schayer - Screenwriter, Fred Gabourie - Technical Director
