The General

Rail Of A Tale

The General
USA 1926
Directed by Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton
Eureka Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray Zone B boxed edition

It’s been quite a while since I sat down and watched a silent movie and even longer since I last had a look at The General. For some reason I’ve always preferred, in terms of early silent movie US comics, people like Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd over people like Charlie Chaplin and Keaton especially appeals to me, perhaps, because of the stony faced visage which he constantly presents throughout the course of his pictures. I don’t remember if he ever smiled during one of his movies and this reminds me of myself, to a certain extent.

Now, I’ve never really been much into laughing at comedy movies. My absolute favourite writers and performers of the genre would be Woody Allen and The Marx Brothers but even when I am watching their films I tend to not really laugh so much as watch all the details intently and analyse the way in which the comedy works. Therefore, honestly, I’m not a fun person to take to a comedy because, at least when I’m looking at something like a horror movie in a similar fashion, it doesn’t matter too much to others that I don’t laugh (although, truth be told, I might be more likely to laugh during a really bad exploitation picture or modern horror tale).

The General is based, I’m guessing quite loosely, on events during the American Civil War when a similar incident involving a soldier stealing said train (The General) to further their own, nefarious ends took place (depending on whether you are rooting for the blues or the greys... I never know the difference). In this version of events, Keaton plays the driver, Johnnie Gray, who ends up going after the stolen locomotive, with all the expected and often unexpected comedy shenanigans and, more importantly for lovers of Keaton’s work, I suspect, all the ingenuity that his particularly clever brand of visual comedy brought to the story.

The set up is of Keaton courting girlfriend Annebelle Lee, played quite resiliently given some of the things that happen to her, by Marion Mack. However, war breaks out and when Lee’s father and brother go to enlist, she urges Keaton to do the same. Alas, when he gives his profession as railway engineer, he is deemed too important to be allowed to go and fight. Although he doesn’t quite know this yet because the reveal of that info is only for the audience and the stigma of him not being able to enlist is enough to keep his sweetheart from ever talking to him again until he is in uniform.

Time passes and the train is stolen by the Union army. However, due to unforseen circumstances, Keaton’s girlfriend Annabelle is also along for the ride as a prisoner of the soldiers. The movie then turns into a ‘chase, rescue, escape and tell the confederates of the upcoming attack before the union soldiers can stop us’ kind of affair... filled with all your favourite gags and cleverness that you expect from Keaton.

There’s also a lot of danger involved in some of these films and you have to wonder sometimes how these things ever got made at all. There’s no way a studio would let some of the things Keaton does in this be performed by any of the actors these days... you’d be liable to lose your leads. The amount of running and climbing along the speeding train Keaton does, for example. Or the wonderful moment where he is sitting on the crossbeam by the side of the wheels and the train chugs into motion, taking him with it. Or the time when he jumps out the train, clears a bit of wood out of the way, keeps it in his hands as he sits on the cow catcher and then throws it at another bit of wood, catapulting it off the track just in time. There’s some good stuff here and, of course, a lot of the actors get caught up in the ‘spirit’ of these films. For example, when the pipe to fill up with water comes off at the other end and Marion Mack is suddenly knocked over by the force of gallons of water, she was kept in the dark as to what was about to happen to ensure a more lifelike reaction to the proceedings.

The newish Blu Ray restoration from Eureka Masters of Cinema is the absolutely best presentation I’ve seen of this movie. The running time is a little longer than that listed on the IMDB but I suspect that’s because the film is actually running at something approaching the correct speed for this presentation. Which I’m guessing is a really hard thing to do because, if memory serves, a lot of these silent films were hand cranked and so the speed was kinda up and down depending on how good the camera operators were at keeping a certain rhythm going and also how tired they were at the time of the shot. The presentation of the movie on here uses the Carl Davis score for those of you who are interested in such things. So, yeah, this new one is pretty much the definitive version to own, from what I can see (although it’s taken me so long to get this particular review up that I believe the same company are already bringing out another reissue very soon... so that’s possibly the one to get).

A bit of a short review but The General is definitely a good place to start if you’re unfamiliar with the work of Buster Keaton and I really wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of modern stuntmen weren’t still getting inspired by this guy now. Whether they would have been allowed to do some of them, however... or even if they’d need to now, in the ago of CGI... is another question.