Film: The General
Director: Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman
Country: USA
Released: December 1926
Runtime: 75 minutes
Genre: Comedy
Studio: United Artists
Influenced: Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Werner Herzog, Jackie Chan
Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd were the great triumvirate of silent film comedy actors, and arguments have long raged about who was the greatest. While I find Chaplin funnier, it has to be said that Keaton used more imagination in exploring the comic potential of cinema, with an array of daring stunts that continually pushed the boundaries. Many of Chaplin's set pieces could just as well have been performed on stage at a music hall, whereas Keaton created scenes that could only be captured on cinema, like The General's most memorable stunt – crashing a real life train – which at that point in time was the most expensive stunt ever committed to celluloid. In that sense, was this the first action movie?
Set in the Civil War, The General is based on a real historical event, the “Great Locomotive Chase”, a military raid that took place in 1862. The film's main character, Johnnie Gray, has two loves – his train and his fiancée. His devotion leads him to perform perilous stunts, such as jumping in front of a train cart to clear debris and setting a bridge on fire so that an enemy train would fall into the river and crash. He also helps his beloved escape from a house during a storm in the middle of the night. Of note is how the film causes us to root for Gray and other soldiers from the South, despite any reservations we might have about the Confederate cause.
Keaton filmed the majority of the scenes on location in Cottage Grove, Oregon, a small town close to the mountains, providing The General with its stunning backdrop. The movie's spectacular chases, fires and explosions are captured with fluid camerawork, all the more impressive when you consider that Keaton didn't have a stunt double.
One of the things that I love most about Keaton is his comic timing and deadpan reactions to the chaos and destruction surrounding him; even the film's bleakest moment – Gray commanding a cannon team, unaware that a sniper is killing them off one by one and simply getting more and more confused as they keep falling down dead – is somehow made funny by Keaton's artistry.
See also (starring Buster Keaton): Sherlock Jr, Steamboat Bill Jr, The Cameraman
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