The General (1927 film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The General
Directed by	Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton
Produced by	Joseph M. Schenck
Written by	Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton
Starring	Buster Keaton, Marion Mack
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date(s)	February 5, 1927
Running time	75 min.
Country	United States
Language	Silent film English intertitles
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

The General is a 1927 silent comedy about a bumbling Confederate engineer (train driver) who pursues Union spies who steal his beloved locomotive, The General, which incidentally also carries his estranged girlfriend, Annabelle Lee. Buster Keaton starred in the film and co-directed it with Clyde Bruckman. It was adapted by Al Boasberg, Bruckman, Keaton, Charles Henry Smith (uncredited) and Paul Girard Smith (uncredited) from the memoir The Great Locomotive Chase by William Pittenger.

[edit] Plot

Buster Keaton in the locomotive cab.

Buster Keaton plays Johnnie Gray, a Confederate in the Civil War, with a fiancée named Annabelle Lee and a job as a train engineer. When many men in his town are urged to sign up for the army, he is first in line but is turned down, as an officer thinks he is more valuable as an engineer, but Johnny is not told this. While leaving, dejectedly, he comes across Annabelle's father and brother, who beckon to him to join the line, but he sadly dismisses them and walks on. This is misinterpreted by the father as an act of running away, causing him to tell Annabelle that her fiancée is a coward who would not even get in line to sign up. Annabelle coldly informs Johnnie that he had better get in uniform if he ever wants to speak to her again then walks away. A year passes, and Annabelle receives word that her father was wounded. She travels northward to find him, but her train -- coincidentally Johnnie's train --is hijacked by Union spies, and she is kidnapped. It is up to Johnnie to rescue his beloved engine and girl, as well as the Army of Tennessee.

The plot turns on a chase between two locomotives and a railroad worker, played by Keaton, initially on a handcart and later on another locomotive. Although played for laughs in the film, many of the events actually occurred in a chase through Georgia and Tennessee between trains pulled by locomotives named The General and The Texas (see Great Locomotive Chase for more details on the actual event). The event was also the subject of the Disney film The Great Locomotive Chase.

Keaton performs lots of dangerous physical stunts on and around the moving train, which include jumping from the engine to a tender to a boxcar, sitting on the cow-catcher of the slow moving train while holding a railroad tie, and running along the roof.

One of the most dangerous stunts occurred when Buster sat on one of the side rods, which connect the drivers of the locomotive. In the film the train starts gently and gradually picks up speed as it enters a tunnel. The visual effect of the forlorn Buster as the motion of the side rod moves him gently up and down is very poignant. But in real life, it's nearly impossible for any engineer to start any train moving this precisely. If he hadn't accelerated by exactly the correct amount, the rods would have moved so fast as to send Buster flying. He would certainly have been injured seriously, and could easily have been killed. The story goes that it took considerable persuasion on his part to convince the engineer to go through with it.

The climax of the film includes a spectacular moment where a bridge (sabotaged by Johnnie) collapses as a railroad train crosses it (compare The Bridge on the River Kwai). Keaton filmed the bridge collapse in the conifer forest around the town of Cottage Grove, Oregon, using 500 extras from the Oregon National Guard. He did not tell the actor portraying the Northern commanding officer what to expect: his look of total shock was genuine.

This scene was one of the single most expensive shots in motion picture history at the time. The production company could not afford to remove the wreckage after the scene was filmed, so they left the wrecked locomotive in the river bed, where it became a minor tourist attraction for nearly twenty years. The metal of the train was salvaged for scrap during World War II.

[edit] Critics and audience responses

Buster Keaton did his own stunts for the movie. Here he stands atop the cab of a moving locomotive trying to see farther ahead down the track.

The General received only mediocre reviews upon its release. It was not one of Keaton's biggest box office successes, which disappointed him as he considered it to be the best of all his movies. Audiences and critics would later agree with him after re-considering the film, and it is now considered a major classic of the silent era.

The film is consistently in the Internet Movie Database's list of top 250 films, was #18 on American Film Institute's 100 Years, 100 Laughs, and has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

In a 2002 poll of critics and filmmakers on the best films ever made, critic Roger Ebert listed it as number six. [1] It is also on his list of Great Movies. [2]

[edit] See also

• List of United States comedy films

[edit] External links

• The Raid Lives On
• Ranjit Sandhu's notes
• The General at the Internet Movie Database
• Download the original version (Public Domain)
• Choice Clips (Public Domain)

[edit] Further reading

• Huntley, John (1969). Railways In The Cinema. Ian Allan, 33-42. SBN 7110 0115 4.