![]() It is considered by fans and critics to be Keaton still in top form, and it was added to the National Film Registry in 2005. The Cameraman was Keaton's first film with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. MGM writing department used the film to train new writers as a "perfectly constructed comedy" for decades. The film was a box office hit, grossing $797,000, and was well-received by film critics. 22 writers were assigned to work on it, but Keaton convinced Thalberg to throw out the script and allow him to film it his own way. However MGM's head of production Irving Thalberg loved the finished film and laughed during screenings of its rushes. Keaton was accustomed to complete control over his own productions and was unaccustomed to interference from producers. Weingarten and Keaton fought on set and Weingarten called Keaton a child. The film was overseen by producer Lawrence Weingarten. Keaton was later to call the move to MGM "the worst mistake of my career.” Within a little over a year, however, MGM would take away Keaton's creative control over his pictures, thereby causing drastic and long-lasting harm to his career. It is considered by fans and critics to be Keaton still in top form, and it was added to the National Film Registry in 2005 as being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." ![]() The Cameraman was Keaton's first film with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Harold, an MGM cameraman who has designs on Sally himself, mocks his ambition. To be near her, he purchases an old film camera, emptying his bank account, and attempts to get a job as one of MGM's filmers. So let us celebrate a still “undomesticated anarchic talent”, which permeates scenes of ghostly manifestations and an ascent to heaven in The Haunted House (one of the many fatal abodes built by Keaton), at the family dinner in My Wife’s Relations and his athletic failures in College….Buster, a sidewalk tintype portrait photographer in New York City, develops a crush on Sally, a secretary who works for MGM Newsreels. In both instances, Metro-Goldwyn Mayer managed to domesticate anarchic talent for a larger and more sentimental constituency”. what A Night at the Opera is to Duck Soup for the Marx Brothers. Yet, in retrospect, we can feel that something is changing.“He’s not yet entirely a character in someone else’s movie, but he is no longer a drifter within his own universe,” wrote Andrew Sarris, “ The Cameraman is to Steamboat Bill, Jr. In having been able to stoically overcome, just like in his films, all the obstacles on his path. But perhaps it’s in its very success that lay the beginning of Keaton’s downfall. Another declaration of love for cinema and ‘making cinema’ (and reflecting on the paradoxes of success), this film abounds with brilliant comic ideas and genuinely epic moments. It is hard to believe that a marvel such as The Cameraman was born in such a stifling atmosphere. ![]() Keaton docilely went along with the course of events.Įveryone knows about what happened next: the alleged 22 gagmen lined up by MGM, a young and ambitious producer’s rampages on the set, a script that was difficult to develop and with too many writers, which Keaton viewed as an obstacle to his creative process. This was a freedom that Keaton clearly cherished but also never really fought for, neither at the beginning of his career – it was his staggering talent that stood out – nor during his fatal move to MGM, orchestrated by Joseph Schenck and signed in January of 1928. “When we made pictures,” he would say of those unique times, “we ate, slept and dreamt ’em”. ![]() ![]() For eight years Keaton had worked incessantly in an atmosphere of artistic fervour, experimentation and creative freedom. In addition to the new titles restored in partnership with the Cohen Film Collection, we are presenting the complex yet essential restoration of The Cameraman – Keaton’s first film for MGM and his last masterpiece – the result of a recent collaboration with Warner Bros. Our programme this year goes beyond the scope and the ‘temporal perimeter’ of the Keaton Project: 30 great, major or minor films, starring and directed by Buster Keaton (in tandem with Eddie Cline, Malcolm St. ![]()
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