The General (1926)

Buster Keaton/ Joseph M. Schenck/ United Artists
Director: Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton
Starring: Buster Keaton, Marion Mack

Honors:
#18 on AFI Top 100 Films (2007)
#18 on AFI Top Laughs
National Film Registry

#Buster Keaton pulls out all the stops for what would be his masterpiece. The General was to Keaton as A Birth of a Nation was to D.W. Griffith, as it was a large production that centered around the story of the Confederate South and would be the production that would define his career as a filmmaker, being the pivotal point in his time on the silver screen. With sweeping vistas, scores of extras, large set pieces created specially for the picture, and perhaps what is considered the most expensive stunt in the silent era, the General is a classic in every sense of the word.

This Keaton adventure is based on the true life Civil War confrontation known as "the Great Locomotive Chase of 1862," where Union soldiers hijacked a locomotive in Georgia and raced to the north destroying telegraph lines on their way before being caught and put to death as spies in the South. Keaton portrays train conductor Johnnie Gray (how fitting for a southerner huh?) who is said to have two loves in his life, his fiancee Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack) and his locomotive "the General." When his town hears of the break out of war Johnnie is the first in line to enlist but is told that he is more valuable to the South as a conductor. When Annabelle and her family finds out that he will not enlist, despite not why he could not, they shun Johnnie including Annabelle who says she will not marry him if he was not a soldier.

A year later Annabelle is traveling on the General to see her father who was wounded in battle, when at a meal stop the train would be hijacked by northern soldiers with Annabelle as the only one left on board. Johnnie would take chase after his loved engine, and would eventually discover he would be attempting to save his loved lady as well. A memorable chase after the soldiers, followed by the Johnnie reclaiming his "General" and running back to the Southern lines are full of laughs ending with the climactic scene where the Union train is destroyed along with a collapsing bridge leading to a Confederate victory and Johnnie being given the enlisted rank of lieutenant in turn winning over his lovely Annabelle's heart.

Miles of train tracks were laid out for this production, including parallel tracks for many cases to shoot tracking shots of the trains in motion while Buster is running, jumping, and climbing all over them. As usual performing all his stunts, Keaton takes it another step performing on a real life operating locomotive where one wrong step could have sent with flying off the train or even be crushed by its wheels. With all of Keaton's skill and humor all stunts are performed with the look of ease and continue to entertain audiences discovering the film for the first time today. The set for the climactic scene of the massive train wreck with the collapsing bridge was build for the purpose of the scene near the town of Cottage Grove, Oregon is said to be the most expensive stunt for a silent film. The wreckage was left behind after filming, which seemed to be common in the early history of film of leaving sets behind, and it became a minor tourist attraction for the area until WWII when the mental was salvaged for the war effort.

Critical acclaim was hard to come by for Buster's film. Most major critics found it entertaining, but a let down, as they where looking for a more goofy comedy, perhaps with more slapstick as seen in other Keaton classics. This hurt Keaton as he saw it as his best picture. It also hurt him financially as the film proved to be a box office flop, which could be seen as straw that broke his back and forced him to sign with a major studio, making him lose a bit of his creative control with a studio contract. Time would prove to help this picture as it would be discovered by film lovers in libraries across the world. The General was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the first year the selection proccess was made in 1989. Today the film is found on many top film lists including AFI's Top Laughs list (#18) and AFI's 2007 Top Films (#18) as well as many critic's all time top film lists. It also own the honor of being the first silent film ever distributed on high definition Blu-Ray.

This would be Buster Keaton's swan song as time would tell. This would the his masterpiece that all his films would be compared to as his future would not be as bright. Soon he would fall into the studio system in Hollywood and the advent of sound would make Keaton, a silent comedian, be a less attractive choice for movie goers looking to see the new thing known as "talkies." Like Orson Welles with Citizen Kane, Keaton would not have his film seen as great during its initial release, but time would show that this was work of a true genius of film, and comedy at that.