My primary goal, during my early explorations of Paris, was not to soak up the city’s rich heritage, thoughtfully preserved though it is, but to find and photograph locations from Philippe de Broca’s 1964 adventure film, L’Homme de Rio. Like most acts of love, it was a pointless exercise, of exactly no value to the wider world, but there was a definite thrill in stepping inside the frame of a favourite film. Even on my own limited terms I can’t pretend I was thorough; I ended up making it to only a couple of locations, neither especially iconic to the film—but then, I wasn’t in Rio. After one such excursion, during which I snapped a corner used in a car chase, I chanced upon a tiny art cinema that was running a season of Jean-Paul Belmondo films. Eagerly I scanned the titles, but L’Homme de Rio, alas, was not one of them. I grabbed a ticket to L'Opérateur instead and wandered in to take my seat.
The theatre was small and, discounting a scattering of lone males, empty. While The Cameraman (to use its original title) was less of a thematic complement to my non-adventures, there was still a Paris connection: the version of the film that is screened today exists, in part, due to the discovery of a complete print in Paris after a fire at MGM destroyed what were thought to be the only copies. An inventive, intermittently sublime confection, The Cameraman represents the last occasion in which Buster Keaton had true creative control over his work; thereafter the reality of his disastrous deal with MGM saw the greatest of the silent clowns appearing in a series of increasingly dispiriting misfires until his drunken despondency, during production on the justly forgotten What! No Beer?, finally got him fired.
Because his films—the ones that endure—are so exhilaratingly constructed, it is easy to overlook the fact that Buster Keaton is among the most beautiful people to ever appear on a cinema screen. His famously immovable face, able to convey emotion without apparent alteration, commands the gaze with deep, sad-cow eyes and chisel-perfect cheekbones. The Great Stone Face, as he was affectionately known, was indeed worthy of being carved into stone. It is a beauty which is difficult to define, but the toothsome combination of stoicism, innocence and—always—melancholy would have made Keaton an arresting screen presence even if he weren't a supremely gifted filmmaker.
There is a scene in the film in which Keaton’s character, the titular cameraman, travels to a baseball stadium to record footage of a Yankees game. When he arrives the stadium is empty and he is informed by a groundskeeper that the Yankees are, in fact, playing in a different city that day. After the groundskeeper departs, Keaton’s dejection transforms unexpectedly into playfulness; abandoning his efforts to tame his tripod, he walks over to the pitcher’s mound and begins play-acting, recreating the familiar mannerisms and manoeuvres of a pitcher in extraordinary detail before doing the same at the other end as an imagined batsman. Sitting in that little screening room, watching Keaton round the bases for his triumphant home run, I found myself inexplicably on the verge of tears.
Untested courage aside, I’ll be the first to admit that I would relish the opportunity to embark on a globe-trotting quest to rescue Françoise Dorléac from artefact thieves; it would make for great copy. But merely flying to another country does not guarantee adventure. In other words, buckle up for more exciting tales of weeping to cinema.