The Cameraman (1928)

(On Cable TV, August 2019) At his peak, Buster Keaton was a timeless talent, and if The Cameraman is not exactly his finest or funniest film (that would be The General or Sherlock, Jr.), it’s still Keaton in top form, stringing physical gags along a decent-enough plot. Here, we have Keaton playing the kind of earnest but slightly clueless young man out to make a fortune and secure a wife by trying his luck at being a cameraman for MGM newsreels. Switching between courtship in 1920s Manhattan and the comic perils of being a cameraman in the middle of a gangster war, The Cameraman has a stream of physical gags, charming period details, and Keaton keeping a stone-face expression. The premise of the film was later reused for Red Skelton’s Watch the Birdie, but the original film remains the funniest version—no one could (or still can) outdo Keaton. For his fans, The Cameraman is also a bit of a sad junction in his career—his penultimate silent film, and the one where he started losing his independence as a filmmaker, never to return to the heights of his 1923–1928 zenith. Still, never mind that: The Cameraman is a reliably funny film, and one of the few 1920s productions that can still be enjoyed today without compromises.