The Cameraman (1928)
Buster Keaton’s first MGM feature, and, like the Marx Brothers’ seven years later, it has significantly more storyline, characterization, and mawkishness than Keaton’s previous work, as well as an adorable monkey tossed in for good measure.
Buster’s love-struck tintype-snapper tries to land a job as an MGM news cameraman and romances the office’s pretty secretary (Marceline Day), who prefers his plucky eagerness to the army of enormous musclemen and egoists pursuing her, and she assists him with tip-offs, which he seems doomed to mess up.
The gags are often hilarious, especially the one-shot scene where Buster Keaton and a larger man try to change into bathing suits in the one tiny cubicle, entangled in each other’s clothes, and the brilliantly staged climax where he tries to film a huge Tong war, dodging machine gun bullets, assassins with knives, and a cop who wants him carted away to the loony bin.
