The General

The General (1926)

Runtime: The version I saw was a hair under 79 minutes in length

Directed by: Buster Keaton/Clyde Bruckman

Starring: Buster Keaton, Marion Mack, Glen Cavender, Jim Farley, Frederick Vroom

From: Buster Keaton Productions/Joseph M. Schneck Productions

Here's a movie I have seen before yet the last viewing was a long while ago. I was pretty happy to see this one again, as it's something I rate very highly. The Letterboxd review is below:

This wasn't the plan but last night I ended up watching another film I had seen a handful of times before and yet the last viewing was years ago. I now regret not revisiting this sooner.

The plot is simple yet effective: Johnnie Gray (Buster Keaton) is an engineer on a railroad so he is deemed valuable and thus can't sign up to join the Confederacy in the Civil War. I imagine there are a few who object to that side being covered but it never bothered me none. Even with there being several shots of the Confederate flag and that being a white-hot issue now, it really doesn't matter for the story.

Anyhow, we jump ahead in time two years and the North concocts a plan to stop the South and it requires Gray's train being stolen... and his girl is unwittingly involved. He busts his hump trying to get both back, and what you see is a panoply of stunts, creative physical humor, great sight gags, and an always entertaining story that never lets up. Of course Buster did all of his own stunts and that's insane to think that a movie star would do such things as train parkour, throwing large pieces of lumber around, sliding down a rocky cliff, and dodging locomotives all by himself. To think that this was all filmed in 1926 and yet it seems light years ahead of its time due to how it was filmed.

It's a shame that this was somehow a commercial and critical failure at the time, negatively affecting the rest of Keaton's career. At least we still have works of art like this to admire him for, and practically all of his best work can be found on YouTube for those that have never seen them before.

As for this in particular, this is one I should be able to watch often in the future, so I can both enjoy and admire the ingenious visual and physical humor.