Many silent-film comedians are now undeservedly forgotten, but Billy Franey is *deservedly* forgotten. His films are only slightly amusing, and the few laughs are usually supplied by written gags in the intertitles, rather than anything happening on screen. Typically, a silent-film comedian with no particular talent could still raise a few laughs by exploiting his bizarre physical appearance. (For example Victor Potel, who was extremely tall and beanpole-thin.) But Billy Franey was an ordinary-looking man who usually stayed quite ordinary on screen, without resorting to fake moustaches or costumes.
'The Cameraman' is probably Franey's funniest film . . . not because of anything Franey does, but because of a truly imaginative and hilarious running gag that almost seems to belong to a separate movie.
The (unfunny) plot of this film concerns Billy's travails as a newspaper shutterbug. Meanwhile, in EVERY SINGLE SHOT in this film, we see an old man seated on a soapbox, calmly whittling. His location changes in each shot: sometimes he's in the foreground, sometimes the background, sometimes far away near the horizon. He never interacts with any of the other characters, none of whom pay attention to him. Our eyes are drawn to him by the steady motion of his knife hand, calmly whittling. The constant unexplained presence of this man becomes steadily funnier, especially as nothing else that's happening is funny.
SPOILER COMING. The payoff at the end of the film is brilliantly absurdist. Finally, after Billy's camera career has failed, the old man is still sitting on his soapbox, still whittling. Now, along come two attendants from the local lunatic asylum. The old man stands up and starts laughing dementedly. A title card explains that the experience of sitting through this entire film has driven the whittler insane. The two attendants escort him into the lorry that will take him back to the looney bin. (They neglect to relieve him of his knife.)
Right, so maybe you don't think this joke is very funny, but it's the funniest joke you'll ever find in a Billy Franey picture.