![]() But he’s also filled with bravery and pluck, and soon not only proves his love for the leading lady, but also manages to get show stopping footage of a Chinese street gang war and even (accidentally) proves his bravery catching a daring rescue on film which he himself performed. Keaton’s character is clearly hapless and causes disaster in his wake constantly. Sure, our cameraman’s pining for this gorgeous young lady might seem somewhat creepy by today’s standards, but she’s clearly interested, and a sweet and hilarious romance brews even as the hapless cameraman creates havoc wherever he goes through brilliant physical comedy set pieces designed by Keaton. (I guess these folks have character names but since no one is saying them I’ll stick with the actors’ names). In this particular misadventure, Keaton plays a smitten photographer who tries to make it as a news beat cameraman in order to stay close to the radiant Marceline Day, who works at the front desk of the newsroom. What was true in Keaton’s time remains true today: Cinema is a visual medium and those who do the work to create genuine human spectacle can gain audience appreciation on a more potent and visceral level. Hell, even my personal action favorite Scott Adkins has made his name by being able to personally, physically, carry out feats of wonder on screen even in the era of CGI. It’s likely also a safe assessment to suggest that modern-era Tom Cruise would not exist without Keaton as well. Perhaps the most obvious point of comparison is that legendary big screen hero Jackie Chan is a devotee of Keaton and has made a phenomenal career out of doing his own death-defying stunts as inspired by the silent-era great. Though this is the first Keaton film I’ve watched top to bottom, as a student of action cinema it’s clear that without Buster Keaton there would be no action cinema as we know it today. That said, while the differences are indeed myriad, my undying love for action cinema can be traced directly back to the visual wonder of the silent era. The art form is just so dramatically, drastically different today that watching silent film feels like an almost refreshing adventure in time travel. It is a unique and jarring experience to watch silent film in 2020. Barring Nation, I’ve genuinely enjoyed them all, and not just “appreciated” them as historical treasures but personally enjoyed the exploration. Griffith’s The Birth Of A Nation and Harold Lloyd’s The Kid Brother. ![]() I still can’t even boast to have seen as many as a dozen of them in total, but I’ve checked out Metropolis and Modern Times just for fun and here at Cinapse I’ve written up D.W. In the past several years, I’ve been really trying to take opportunities to soak in some of the great silent films and fill in some of my most shameful blind spots. Fortunately for us all, Buster Keaton does an enormous amount of work to make it really easy to enjoy his films no matter what your level of familiarity with him may be, and The Cameraman was a perfectly wonderful first foray into the world of Buster Keaton. I have to get this off my chest right from the top: This is my first ever Buster Keaton film.Īnd to be even more transparent, it’s not even a title I had ever heard of until I got the Criterion announcement email.
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