The General Reviewed on Blu-ray
By Bill Warren
Until the release of this movie, virtually all Blu-ray discs have been movies of recent years, or ones so famous the man in the street would recognize the title. Kino has taken a great step forward: this is a silent movie, released in 1926, that wasn't even a big hit then, but has come to be recognized as one of the greatest comedies ever made, silent or sound. This is not to state that it will leave you weak with laughter, tears of joy streaming down your face; that's just not the kind of comedy it is. But it's wonderfully inventive, amazingly creative--notice how many gags are carefully set up for a later payoff--and it stars Buster Keaton.
He's not as well-known now as he was in his 1920s heyday, but that's the loss of today's audiences. Along with Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, Keaton was one of the greatest comics of the silent era, which really means he's one of the greatest comics ever. You may not know much about him, but today's moviemakers usually do. Jackie Chan in particular owes an enormous debt to Keaton (and often praises him in interviews); they're both vigorously athletic, graced with, well, grace and split-second timing. And they do their own stunts. One of Keaton's most famous stunts (in "Steamboat Bill, Jr.") involves the entire front of a building falling over on the comic--who fits precisely through the one small window on the façade. That took an enormous amount of courage and a perfect understanding of what was going on.
But Keaton's humor didn't depend on that kind of dangerous-looking gag; he could be hilarious simply running down a street, an activity you'll often find him engaged in. (Best example: in "Cops," Keaton is chased by literally hundreds of cops through the streets of downtown Los Angeles.) He had been a physical comic literally since childhood; his parents' vaudeville act often featured little Buster being wadded up and thrown across the stage like a ball. (He got his nickname from an impressed Houdini, who described the kid as "a real buster.") Movies, though, were made for Keaton, and he was made for the movies. He got his start in a bunch of shorts starring Fatty Arbuckle, usually also featuring Al. St. John, Arbuckle's nephew, who later became one of the great B-western sidekicks. Keaton learned movie timing, and what cameras and editing could do. When he set out on his own, the results were even more amazing; he was known as The Great Stone Face, as he rarely changed his expression very much (but he's not as frozen-faced as movie legend has it), but it was his energy, grace, timing, creativity and mastery of his physical self that made him a great comic.
Soon enough, he began starring in features, showing clearly that he was as adept in longer films as he was in shorter ones. The movies usually featured him as an earnest young man who finds himself in increasingly hotter water, who has to dash madly about and save himself from one disaster after another. Like the features of Chaplin and Lloyd, his movies are as watchable and enjoyable today as they ever were. But each has his own style; Chaplin's movies are more sentimental, Lloyd's deal more with his character's problems in love. Keaton's deal more with physical gags, large and small, and his angular body--he's often funny simply shading his eyes and gazing out over the horizon, leaning farther forward than seems possible. If you are unfamiliar with Keaton, do yourself the favor of learning about him; you have nothing but good stuff to look forward to.
Such as "The General." This is probably Keaton's biggest feature; it includes the most expensive single shot in silent movie history, and much of the time involves steam locomotives chugging up and down long stretches of track. It's based on a real-life event, which later gave rise to the live-action Disney movie, "The Great Locomotive Chase." The General is one of the locomotives, and still exists today, perfectly restored, as an exhibit in The Southern Museum in Georgia.
Keaton is Johnnie Gray, the engineer of The General; he's in love with Southern belle Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack), but is hesitant to propose to her. When the Civil War breaks out, Johnnie is first in line at the recruiting office; however, he's turned down because he's more valuable to the South as a railroad engineer. (But no one tells him why he's rejected.) Shocked that he isn't in the Army, Annabelle spurns him.
A year later, a group of Union spies is sent south to steal a locomotive; they're to roar north, ripping up the tracks behind them, damaging the Rebel Army's ability to move and to obtain supplies. The engine they steal is, of course, The General; Johnnie immediately sets out in pursuit, first on foot, then on a railway handcar, then on a wooden penny-farthing bicycle. He finally obtains a locomotive, and the chase is on.
The chase occupies most of the rest of the brisk, fast-paced movie, and involves lots of well-designed gags involving pretty much everything at hand, from a large mortar, to flatcars, to boxcars, to railway trestles. When the Union spies took off with the General, they released all but one of the cars--and that one happened to contain Annabelle Lee. So he has to rescue her, too.
The climax goes on just a few beats too long, but the rest of the movie is simple and simply perfection--every frame, it seems, is perfect. First, visually it's one of the great Civil War movies, as authentic-looking as a Mathew Brady photograph. The troops, both Union and Rebel, look realistically rumpled; their weapons look right, even the terrain looks right, though the movie was shot in and around Cottage Grove, Oregon, far from any Civil War battlefields. What matters, though, is the intensity of Keaton's pursuit, his overcoming every setback with lively creativity. The movie is careful not to depict the Union train-grabbers as villains; after all, the survivors were the first recipients of the Medal of Honor--it was, in fact, created to be given to them (by Abraham Lincoln).
For those unfamiliar with Keaton, or those who merely think they know what he was like, this movie is going to be a revelation and a delight. His gags are perfectly choreographed; like Chaplin, he's as graceful (and athletic) as a ballet dancer, but his big-scale gags involving machinery and the like are also perfectly executed. One of the best involves that formidable-looking mortar, being towed by The General; another involves a boxcar that neatly appears and disappears from Johnnie's view. There are small gags, such as one near the end that involves a saber blade, that are as exquisitely timed as the great big railway stunts. One of the extras is a five-minute compilation of scenes from many Keaton shorts and features (I recognized "Cops" and "Our Hospitality") that involve the comic with trains; it's a tidy, small sampling of what Keaton could do.
This Blu-ray disc was mastered in high definition from a 35mm print, which itself was made from the (fortunately surviving) master negative. Although it does display a lot of white-spot speckling, in terms of clarity and definition, this is probably the best-looking of all surviving silent films; it's as crisp and clear as possible. It's also tinted (or toned) throughout: daytime and lamp-lit scenes are tinted light amber, nighttime scenes are blue. The film stock was better than probably most people today expect, and the movie looks simply wonderful. Dark areas feature detail, there's no washing-out of lighter areas. Keaton fans are fortunate: after he died, the person who bought his house knocked open a walled-up area and found a large collection of negatives and prints.
The Blu-ray includes optional music tracks. A lush orchestral score by Carl Davis is available both in 5.1 and 2.0; a theater-organ score by Lee Erwin works well, too, but I considered the best option to be the more simple traditional piano score by Robert Israel. It's not original, instead being made up of traditional silent movie cues. But it seems to work better with the images; the orchestral score seems to try to dominate the movie.
There are other extras; an expert gives us a tour and history of the real locomotive, The General. Keaton tried to arrange to use it for the movie, but was turned down when the owners learned his movie was to be a comedy. He and his team searched for an area that could provide more than one locomotive of the type they needed, plus plenty of existing track. This took them to Cottage Grove, Oregon (just south of Eugene), where the trains were used in logging activities. Another feature gives us a tour of a map of Cottage Grove, plus comparisons between locations seen in the movie, and how they look today. There's a brief compilation of home movie footage shot during production, and an introduction for the old series "Silents Please" by Gloria Swanson. A highlight is a lengthy warm and informative introduction to the movie and Keaton by Orson Welles, looking great. Perhaps surprisingly, there's no commentary track.
Don't make the mistake of thinking a silent comedy, even one starring Buster Keaton, is something quaint and dated; this is a vigorous, consistently funny, almost hypnotically-watchable classic, as great today as it was yesterday. This is one you should not miss.
