The General

Buster Keaton's THE GENERAL is one of the most ingenious films I have ever seen. It tells in a nutshell of a railroad engineer who, after being rejected by the army in the civil war, and thus his girl for seeming to have not enlisted, is engaged in a locomotive chase into enemy lines all to rescue his train: The General. In the film, Keaton's serious man who is here named Johnnie Gray is always determined and, for lack of a better term, hard working. We are told he loves two things in life: his girl, Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack) and his train: the General. As the film opens of Johnnie going to his girls house, a wonderfully simple, but calculated joke is being played on him as a few boys closely mirror his movements and walk right behind him. They are joined by Annabelle Lee, the very person whose house Johnnie is going to (but he has no idea that they are all behind him). When he reaches the house, knocks on the door and finds the boys and Annabelle behind him, he merely straightens up and doesn't allow luck to bash him down. This is the central force behind THE GENERAL and its comedy: luck. Johnnie Gray in his locomotive chase is quite unlucky for it to have been the very train he loves to be taken away, and in many turns of fate, he is unlucky. Especially in one scene where he finds a cannon, we see and exclaim how strange, but lucky it is that he would find it. But things balance out, and the cannon, after being loaded, is tipped downward and threatens to kill Gray. There is a balance of luck within THE GENERAL that allows for everything that occurs within it to never seem persuasive in one way or another. Also, Keaton's character is a southerner, and in the chase, everyone is rooting for him to defeat the evil northerners. I saw this film at Santa Fe's Lensic with the Alloy Orchestra. It is the only time I will ever hear Santa Fe liberals rooting for the South in the Civil War. This, again, is a tribute to Keaton's genius. Only 60 years after the Civil War, he makes his character on the wrong side of the war. I see this as a statement to the universal nature of comedy, nothing more or less. Keaton's film is also deceptively called THE GENERAL, which provokes one to think it will be a war film, and then in the opening scene we see that the general is merely a train, but then Keaton takes us back to a war film. Apart from being wonderful to look at, THE GENERAL is a feat of moviemaking in its spectacle. There are no special effects in 1926, and thus everything that occurs in the film is real. That is courageous of a filmmaker. There's an advanced comedy, nobility, and self-awareness to THE GENERAL. It speaks through time and doesn't age.
The General: ★★★★