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The General (1927) is an imaginative masterpiece of
dead-pan "Stone-Face" Buster Keaton comedy,
generally regarded as one of the greatest of all silent
comedies (and Keaton's own favorite) - and undoubtedly
the best train film ever made. The Civil War adventure-epic
classic was made toward the end of the silent era. Posters
describing the slapstick film heralded: "Love, Locomotives
and Laughs."
However, Keaton's greatest picture (arguably) received
both poor reviews by critics (it was considered tedious
and disappointing) and weak box-office results (about
a half million dollars) when initially released in the
late 20s, and it led to Keaton's loss of independence
as a film-maker and a restrictive deal with MGM. It would
take many decades for the film to be hailed as one of
the best ever made.
Filled with hilarious sight gags and perfectly timed stunt
work, the chase comedy was written and directed by Buster
Keaton and Clyde Bruckman, and filmed with a huge budget
for its time ($750,000 supplied by Metro chief Joseph
Schenck). It is memorable for its strong story-line of
a single, brave, but foolish Southern Confederate train
engineer doggedly in pursuit of his passionately-loved
locomotive ("The General") AND the woman he
loves. His stoic, unflappable reactions to fateful calamities,
his ingenious and resourceful uses of machines and various
objects (water tanks, a large piece of timber, a cowcatcher,
a rolling artillery cannon on wheels, and unattached railroad
cars), and the unpredictable forces of Nature, provide
much of the plot.
The film's fictionalized plot was based on Lieut. William
Pittenger's Daring and Suffering: A History of the Great
Railway Adventure (aka The Great Locomotive Chase), a
true Civil War story of the daring raid/seizure by a group
of about two-dozen Union spies (led by civilian spy James
J. Andrews) of a Confederate train near Atlanta (at Marietta,
Georgia) in April of 1862. They attempted to ride "The
General" back into the Union, meanwhile wrecking
communications, tracks, and bridges along the return way
to Union-occupied Chattanooga (about 140 miles away).
Within just 10 miles of safety at the border, the Union
group was captured and Andrews and seven of his Raiders
were later hanged as spies in Atlanta in June, 1862. Congress
created the Medal of Honour in 1861-62 and posthumously
awarded it to some of the Raiders (James Andrews, leader
of the raiders, was not in the military and therefore
not eligible).
The original tale (told from a Northern perspective) was
reworked for the film - the tale was told from the point
of view of the South and a Southern engineer, a second
return train-chase was added, and a heroine named after
Edgar Allan Poe's Annabelle Lee was also introduced. A
second film was also made to depict the raid - Walt Disney's
The Great Locomotive Chase (1956), with Fess Parker as
mastermind Union spy James J. Andrews.
The General displays marvellous technical and structural
perfection, playful comic inventiveness and realistic
romance, and nonchalant graceful, fluid athleticism on
the part of Keaton - the Great Stone Face. Realistic stunts
(without stuntmen to double for Keaton), uncontrived,
free-flowing set-pieces, non-stop motion, and a preoccupation
with authenticity make parts of the film a visual history
of the American Civil War, with each shot looking like
a Matthew Brady photograph. Part of the film was shot
near Cowan, Tennessee, between Nashville and Chattanooga.
Another locale for the film was around Cottage Grove,
Oregon alongside Oregon's Row River, where a half-mile
stretch of narrow-gauge track was found for the two ancient,
wood-burning, steam locomotives that figured prominently
in the film (the General and the Texas). [The original
antique locomotive, the General, on display in Chattanooga
at Union Station since 1911, was not used in the film.
The Texas was the locomotive that used for the river-gorge
crash sequence.]
Each half of the film is predominantly composed of two
train chases over the same territory. Each scene in the
chase of the first half has a counterpart in the film's
second half. In the first chase, loyal Southern engineer
Johnnie pursues the blue-coated spies who have stolen
The General and escaped to the North. In the second half,
the Union spies chase Johnnie in his re-possessed General
back to the South. The film concludes with a climactic
battle at a river gorge, with the dramatic crash of the
pursuit train into the Rock River in the film's most spectacular
scene - and the most expensive shot of the entire silent
era.
(This review continues with a comprehensive commentary
on the film on http://www.filmsite.org/gene.html)
Buster Keaton is the comedian's comedian, a fantastically
athletic genius whose stunts are still astonishing today.
Armando Iannucci pays tribute in The Guardian:
When I was a student, I had up on my wall a very very large
poster of Buster Keaton. It was a full-length photo: he
was just standing, looking rather stony-faced. A comedian
completely slapstick-less. It dominated the room. While
my contemporaries raided Athena for tennis players scratching
their arse or Debbie Harry looking unobtainable, I had a
rather bleak looking individual who was supposed to be funny
but seemed suicidal.
Actually, Buster Keaton's face, the look of a silent movie
star who was known at the time as "The Great Stoneface",
was one of the most magical in cinema history - greater
even, I'd say, than Garbo's. Keaton had hit on the rather
excellent joke that you could make things funnier the less
you showed everyone how funny they were. A house could collapse
around him, or 14 tons of soot could fall from above, and
it just seemed funnier if he stood there expressionless
at the end of it, rather than chucking his hat violently
to the ground and storming off mouthing the word "Doh!"
If you're going to characterise your entire career in cinema
by a single expression, the expression on Buster Keaton's
face is a very good one to have. I remember recognising
this when I first saw Steamboat Bill, Jr, made in 1928.
There's a scene in it featuring a particularly fierce hurricane
visiting destruction on a small town. Keaton is holding
on to a tree to stop being blown away by the fierce gale.
However, the force is so strong the wind breaks the tree
from its roots in the ground and carries it, with Keaton
still clinging on, up and across a river where it slowly
sinks. Keaton's expression throughout all these stunning
visuals is the best part of the joke: he consistently stares
blankly at the camera, a man who can't believe his dignity
is being robbed in this way. The hard stare remains, even
as every last part of him disappears under the water.
Actually, Steamboat Bill, Jr is a very good place to start
if you want to find out why it is people in comedy (and
quite a lot of people in film) revere Buster Keaton so much.
You can take the opportunity to do so at the National Film
Theatre in London, which is running a season of Buster Keaton
films the way they were intended to be shown but so rarely
are: on the big screen. The hurricane sequence in Steamboat
Bill, Jr is one of the most celebrated in all cinema. It's
a technical masterpiece, pushing the mechanics of a young
medium to breaking point.
But it also has some of cinema's finest jokes. Keaton is
in a hospital ward as the storm whips up. In fact, the wind
is so strong, it blows the hospital away, leaving Keaton,
still in bed, in the middle of an empty field. That's a
stunning idea; and, in the world before digital effects,
absolutely gobsmacking to watch: an entire building is suddenly
winched away from around him. Later on you get the most
famous stunt of the lot: an entire front facade falls over,
and Buster survives only because he's in the precise spot
where the space created by an open window falls over him
instead of tons of brick and cement. You laugh, not just
at the stupidity of the visuals, but also because you know
what dangers he must have gone through to get it absolutely
right.
That's why any newcomer to Keaton's comedy is bowled over.
The man had, for all his supposed stillness, an incredible
agility that defied normal human possibility. There's one
scene I remember from one of his shorts in which a train
hurtles past him. He's busy talking to someone as it goes
by (at top speed); he says his farewell, holds out his hand,
and grabs a handle on the side of the train, to be whisked
out of shot faster than a bullet. A simple, one-second sight-gag
that puts all the stunts in Mission: Impossible and Spider-Man
to shame.
Buster Keaton is always compared to Charlie Chaplin, of
course, and people seem to divide themselves off into champions
of either one or the other, as if somehow we can have only
one Undisputed Master of Silent Comedy. The truth is, we
should rejoice in them both. It used to be cool to say Chaplin
wasn't as funny as Keaton, but in fact his films have more
heart, and a narrative wrought with tenderness as well as
anger; that is why they connected with world audiences so
phenomenally. But Keaton, I think, has more of a sense of
the hunger to explore the possibilities of what film could
do. Chaplin puts on a farcical play and films it. Keaton
makes a film from scratch. The humour is in the shot, the
edit, the composition of the frame, as much as it is in
the face and the body. His gags are gags that could only
work in the cinema. Cock and Bull Story has just shown us
how post-modern early novels were. Keaton was being postmodernist
about cinema even as the art form was being born. His films
are full of self-referential gags and, in Sherlock, Jr (1924)
he makes a whole movie about movie magic, playing a projectionist
who falls asleep and dreams he's wandering into his own
film.
There's one short (I think it's One Week, made in 1920)
where Buster has just got married and spends a week building
their new house out of parts that have come delivered in
boxes. In the course of 20 minutes, and for various stupid
reasons there's no point going in to now, the resulting
misshapen two-story house ends up on a primitive cart that
gets stuck crossing a railway line. In the distance, we
can see a train coming. The final few minutes of the film
are spent watching Buster and his wife desperately try moving
the house before it's too late. The train gets nearer and
nearer. This is all done in one shot. Then, just as the
train bears down on us, the camera pans slightly to the
right, revealing a second railway line. The train is on
that one and passes by, leaving the house on the first line
intact. Everyone looks relieved and then a second train
comes from no-where in the opposite direction and smashes
through the house.
Buster Keaton's films are an astounding display from a master
comedian working out to what lengths cinema could go in
the name of comedy. That's why he's revered not just by
comedians but by film directors: he explored both disciplines
to perfection. Go and see Keaton on the big screen and you
will be astounded by the modernist techniques. He wrote
rules of visual comedy that are still in operation today.
I never found his face sad. It looks it, but doesn't feel
it. There's so much more expression than just what you see
on the surface. The still face hid a restless mind, and
a hilarious imagination.
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