The General (1926)

The General (Clyde Bruckman/Buster Keaton, 1926) In April 1862, during the Civil War, a train, "The General," was stolen by a collection of Union soldiers who went hundreds of miles behind enemy lines on a sabotage mission to destroy rail-lines, snap telegraph communications, burn bridges, and generally disrupt supply and communication infrastructure for the Confederate Army by tearing up the tracks of the Atlantic and Western railroad from the town of Big Shanty (just north of Atlanta) to Chattanooga. The story is that when the Blue-legs stole the train, its conductor, one William Fuller (age merely 25), and the engineer pursued the hijackers on foot and track, by hand-car, and speeding backwards train—in other words, by any dogged means necessary—to try and stop the train-jackers, which they did for 87 miles before alerting the Confederacy of the raid. It became legendary as "The Great Locomotive Chase," when an account of the circumstances was published soon after in 1863. 

A scant 64 years later, director Bruckman had read the account and reminded film-comedian Buster Keaton about it, sparking a remembrance Keaton had of reading the story as a youth and the two began elaborate plans to tell the story as a silent feature, even going so far as trying to rent the original locomotive at that time on display in Chattanooga, for the film (they were turned down when the train's owners heard Keaton's plans for their relic was going to be a comedy).

Keaton was undeterred and found a section of the United States where vintage trains were still running—Oregon. Twenty miles south of the city of Eugene, Keaton set up shop in the town of Cottage Grove and, with a budget of $400,000, began what would many (including myself) regard to be his masterpiece, but also his greatest financial failure, which ultimately led to his selling his studio to M-G-M and being folded into their system and derailing his directing, and even his starring, career. 

It is 1861, and Johnny Gray (Keaton) is an engineer on "The General", a train of the Western and Atlantic Railroad. He pulls into Marietta, Georgia to see his sweetheart, Annabelle (Mack Sennett comedienne Marion Mack). On his visit, it's announced that war has broken out between the North and South, and Annabelle's father and brothers head into town to enlist. Johnny takes a short-cut, and gets there to be first in line, but is deeply disappointed when he is turned away—it is determined that his job as an engineer is more important to the war effort, but he isn't informed of that. All he knows is that he has been rejected, despite his repeated efforts. This makes him the subject of disdain in Annabelle's family and she tells him she will never look upon him again until he is in uniform. 

It is a year later, the war is raging, and Annabelle's father has been wounded in the war. As she goes to see him in Chattanooga, she, ironically, is taken aboard Johnny's train "The General" and, seeing him not fighting for the South, she treats him coldly. But, fate steps in. At the breakfast stop in Big Shanty, Union soldiers board the train and hijack it, taking with them a luckless Annabelle who has gone to retrieve money for breakfast from her trunk. Johnny sees the two loves of his life being stolen from the station and he gives chase, urging others to help. But, they all fall to the wayside as Johnny single-mindedly pursues, taking a hand-cart onto the tracks to try and catch up. Then, a bicycle, then another train. 

With a train that has less weight to haul, he's actually able to gain on the Union forces, but, they, fearing an army pursuing them by train—which, due to an unfortunate linkage failure is no longer true—they decide to tear their train apart to toss in the way of the pursuing train, and with which Johnny must deal as he moves along. As in the following memorably well-timed and potentially noggin'-clonking gesture:

When Orson Welles was making Citizen Kane at RKO, he stated that it was liking playing with the biggest, grandest train-set in the world. Now, imagine Keaton doing exactly the same thing with an actual train, mining the situation for every joke and "bit" he could muster as his engineer must play offense, defense and find ways to keep the train running with a limited supply of fuel and every additional structure that passes—a water tower, a large mortar (with cannonballs)—becomes the inspiration for a series of ingenious gags that alternately threaten and thrill, the two responses not being all that dissimilar. It was nothing Keaton hadn't already been doing for a decade, but, here, the work seems all the more inspired.

The General is also a movie about progress. Even as he pursues his quarry, there is a war going on in the background. In fact, he has been pursuing so long, that at some point (which he doesn't notice), Johnny crosses enemy lines. As he moves forward, Southern forces are retreating from an advancing Northern Army, but so concentrated is he in chopping firewood to stoke the engine, that he doesn't even notice. It's a joke that wouldn't work in a sound film (despite the masking thundering that a train makes while travelling, you would still probably hear a battle going on). But, in the world of silents, it's perfectly plausible and might even escape the notice of some viewers. It's here Keaton leaves History behind (the actual hijackers never made it to Chattanooga) and makes his own tracks of story, as once Johnny crosses enemy territory, he is no longer the pursuer, he is the pursued. He beats a hasty retreat.

At Chattanooga, Johnny is able to infiltrate Union headquarters without detection, and manages in his time there to rescue both Annabelle and his precious engine, heading back along the same tracks he had previously traveled—in the other direction. Only this second chase has a different dynamic: this time he and Annabelle are the ones being chased, followed by the Union soldiers on-board the very train he used to pursue them. The priority becomes keeping The General up to speed, supplying wood for the engine, while also keeping an eye on Annabelle, who has a propensity for getting in peril, or being charmingly useless, given the circumstances. 

Her priorities seem to be sweeping—not very helpful—and she's a poor judge of fire-wood, tossing away larger pieces if they have a knot in them and offering twigs as compensation. This evokes a response from Johnny where he first tries to strangle her in frustration and then kisses her for her efforts, marking a point where he loses his hapless love-sickness for her, but regains it as a stronger, more mature love, despite his frustrations with her. The character has grown, lost some of his innocence, but also deepens his feelings for her. In a microcosm, the moment is a small skirmish in The War Between Men and Women, far richer than most examples during the silent era where women were either Madonnas or Victims (but never whores) and where Men vacillated between apes and angels. It is truer than most of Keaton's romantic relationships in movies—women were either Madonnas or Frustrations, and eventually become comic props—but Keaton's protagonist, for the momentary baring of both sides of his id, seems far more transparent and far truer.

The single most expensive shot in the silent movie era.

The two are able to make it back to the Southern lines in time to warn the gray-coats and set up a trap that results in the most spectacular stunt that Keaton has ever staged—the scuttling of the Yankee locomotive by blowing up the bridge over which it is travelling. Scrupulously co-ordinated and filmed with multiple cameras, it was carried out in one unrepeatable "take." The entire production, including construction, began on May 27, 1926 and wrapped the following September 18th. By the end of it, it was rumored that the budget had grown to $1 million (some of which went to paying off local farmers for fires caused on their farms by embers from explosions and the trains), employed some 1500 locals (including 500 from the Oregon National Guard playing Union and Southern troops) and generated some 200,000 feet of film (reminiscent of the Civil War photography of Matthew Brady, as achieved by Keaton, Bruckman, and their cinematographers Bert Haines and Dev Jennings), which he edited over three months for a late December release.

The reviews were brutal at the time and the film lost money, changing Keaton's fortunes and earning him a reputation that prompted closer scrutiny of his film-making and budgets. But, posterity has been far kinder and more generous, and the film has been watched—or "scrutinized" far more than other films of the Silent Era. In 1971, Orson Welles called it "the greatest movie ever made about the Civil War."* In 1972, it was ranked #8 in the BFI's Sight & Sound Magazine poll of the greatest movies ever made (it was ranked #12 in 1982 and #32 in 2012). In 1989, the first year of its inception, it was voted into the United States Film Registry by the Library of Congress. It was the first silent era film to be issued in the HD format of Blu-Ray, and its legacy lingers on influencing the works of Chuck Jones, Blake Edwards, Steven Spielberg, Gore Verbinski, and anybody else who aspires to the gracefulness of visual comedy on film.

*