The General (1926)

THE GENERAL (U)

D: Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman

United Artists (Buster Keaton & Joseph M. Schenck)

US 🇺🇸 1926

75 mins

Comedy/War

W: Al Boasberg, Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton, Charles Henry Smith & Paul Gerard Smith [based on the memoir “The Great Locomotive Chase” by William Pittenger]

DP: Bert Haines & Devereaux Jennings

Ed: Buster Keaton & Sherman Kell

Mus: William P. Perry

Buster Keaton (Johnnie Gray), Marion Mack (Annabelle Lee), Glen Cavender (Union Captain Anderson), Jim Farley (Gen. Thatcher), Frederick Vroom (Confederate General)

There aren’t many silent pictures that remain as influential as they ever were a century after their release, but Buster Keaton’s 1926 classic, The General, is certainly one of them.

Keaton, along with Charlies Chaplin & Harold Lloyd, was one of the kings of 1920’s slapstick comedy and this is arguably his very best work.  He plays a locomotive engineer in a small western town who tries to enlist to fight in the civil war, but is unknowingly refused entry due to being considered an essential worker. 

Considered a coward by his one true love, he has a chance at redemption when his beloved train, The General, is stolen by Union Soldiers and he is called into action to get it, and his true love back.

Buster Keaton truly was a renaissance man in the early days of Hollywood, serving a co-producer, co-writer, co-director and co-editor as well as the star of his projects, but also goes one step further and performs daring and intrepid stunts that have inspired generations since, including the likes of Jackie Chan.

Silent films may be a thing of the past, but there’s no reason to limit them to the forgotten vaults of Hollywood, especially when so many of these films are now in the public domain - and The General is certainly one I’d recommend to even the biggest cynic. 

9/10