1927 / 75 Minutes / Not Rated
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

Buster Keaton’s “The General” was made before movies were able to talk, but I guarantee that you will not miss dialogue. The film may not have been able to speak, but it moves like nobody’s business.

Buster Keaton is one of the all-time masters of comedy and he was, truly, willing to do anything for a joke. Absolutely anything. He risked life and limb in every single film. And for what? So he could amuse us. Maybe that isn’t a good enough reason to put one’s own life in peril, but it was good enough for Buster, and I am glad he did it. Jackie Chan has said that Buster was one of his greatest influences. Just watch one of his movies and it’s easy to see why. Charlie Chaplin’s films are very well done, but today they seem rather quaint and hokey.

Not so with Keaton’s movies. They may not have sound, they may be ancient, but there is something alive going on on the screen.

Especially in “The General”, a film that doesn’t even take time to slow down and gather its breath. It is pure energy from start to finish. “The General” is the story of a Southern railroad engineer during the Civil War. He loves only two things in life: his train and a woman named Annabelle. Annabelle will have nothing to do with Buster, however, unless he joins the fight against the South. But when he tries to enlist, the enlistment office rejects him. Heartbroken, Buster goes back to running the train. One day, his train is stolen by Union spies, with Annabelle on board. Buster sets out to get the train back by any means necessary. He travels first by foot, then by handcar, and then he takes another train.

The train chases make up the majority of the film, and they are dazzling. They have the ingenius creativity and off-the-wall energy of a Looney Tunes cartoon, but are much more eye popping when you consider that these are actual people performing these ludicrous feats of daring. And Buster is the ring leader of it all. Trains are derailed, cannons fire where they aren’t supposed to, obstacles are put on the track and cleverly averted and swords prove more troublesome than helpful. And I sat through it all with the amazement of a small child, a giddy grin hanging on my face. The pace never lets up and the jokes never fall flat. It is more than seventy years old, yet it still seems unbelievably fresh. This may be the most amazing stunt of all. When you see special effects in a film today, you know that they were likely accomplished with the aid of a computer. When you see the things they managed to do in this movie, you sit there scratching your head and wonder how on earth they ever pulled it off without killing someone.

It is ironic that this man performs such dangerous stunts because throughout the entire movie he seems to wear the impervious, bland expression of a tired narcoleptic. This adds to the film’s charm. Chaplin wore a grin and sometimes overreacted to the events going on around him. Keaton met each of them with his own subdued form of surprise. I believe that the latter works better. Especially in one hilarious moment where there is a boxcar in front of his train, slowing it up. He bends down to do something and as he does, the boxcar is forced off the track by the other train. When he looks up, the boxcar is gone and he can’t quite believe it.

The expression on his face in this moment says more than any line of dialogue ever could.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 26th, 1999 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Dale's Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.