![]() ![]() ![]() The dreamlike reverse footage of a diver jumping back to their board mid-dive manipulates the human body’s motion much like Rene Clair’s slow-motion shots in Entr’acte (1924). I’m not sure if Buster knew of this specific niche in the film industry during the 20s but based on this scene, he must have at least seen some experimental films of the time period. The style of these four shots would look familiar to anyone aware of the experimental and avant-garde film community in the 1920s. The final two scenes are shots of traffic as usual on city streets poorly exposed, making it look like cars and people are disappearing as they cross mid-screen. The second shot is a double exposure of a woman walking across a city street superimposed by a battleship at sea, making it look like the woman and the cars around her are submerged in the ocean. I don’t know how you would manage to make that mistake on accident as a novice cameraman but it looks cool nonetheless. The first shot looks strangely like a modern-day boomerang, with a diver jumping off of their board only for the film to stop midway in their dive and reverse, leaving the diver back where they were at the beginning of the clip. Buster’s character’s failure as a cameraman in the film allows for Buster as the director to shine and lets us ask the question: what if Buster had joined with Rene Clair and Walter Ruttman and became an avant-garde silent filmmaker? The newsreel cameramen and boss laugh in derision at Buster’s accidental double exposures and warped footage. We as the audience are shown four short scenes from Buster’s first test footage. Throughout most of the film, she is overshadowed by the operations of the camera, even if she is inextricably connected to Buster’s dreams of being a cameraman and ends up playing a huge part in his success.īuster: An Amateur or Avant-garde Cameraman?Īfter he successfully hits a home run to close out his one-man baseball game, he isn’t so lucky when he screens his footage for the newsreel boss. As the film’s leading lady, Marceline Day is more the object of his desire and the straight woman to Buster’s hijinks than a comedy equal. Buster is trying to get the girl and the job. The stage has been set for the rest of the film. They’ll purchase any good film for their newsreel after all. After being laughed at by the newsreel cameraman Harold, who also has his eye on the same woman, Sally encourages Buster to get a camera to shoot some test footage for the boss. He is so enamored with both Sally and the camera that he promptly asks for a job in the newsroom. While waiting for her to get off work, he finds another love as he examines intently a state-of-the-art newsreel camera. The next day, Buster travels to the MGM Newsreel office to give his new love interest her portrait, free of charge. As we shall see, The Cameraman works best when it is a love story between Buster and his camera. While this part of the film features some great physical comedy at the local pool, it definitely loses some of the dramatic tension built in the first act. When the film spends nearly twenty minutes in the second act following Buster on a date with his love interest Sally, it seems a bit strange for Buster to not have a camera in tow. A camera almost seems like an extension of Buster. It is fitting that his penultimate silent comedy, The Cameraman released in 1928, is centered around the life of a young, aspiring cameraman.Īs the name suggests, cameras dominate the frame from beginning to end alongside Buster’s unique and energetic style. Whether this one experience was truly the impetus for Buster Keaton’s commitment to the art form of cinema or not, there is no doubt of the comedic and directorial genius he cultivated and showed off during his career, particularly in his silent films. ![]() This experience and his curiosity about the camera as a machine is what motivated Buster to give up his life as a vaudeville star and devote himself full-time to the movies not as the cameraman but as a performer. ![]() Buster took the camera apart and put it back together again to learn how it worked. There is a well-known story among Damfinoes that after Buster Keaton’s film’s debut in the Arbuckle vehicle The Butcher Boy (1917), he asked to take home a movie camera with him off the set. ![]()
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