Micro-review · 1926
The General (1926)
- Directed by
- Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman
- Country
- United States
- Running time
- About 75 minutes
- Our rating
- ★★★★★ 5/5
A chase movie where the chase goes both ways, on real trains, with Keaton's face never moving. Every gag pays off twice. The bridge scene used a real locomotive and you can feel the weight of it. If you only watch one silent comedy, make it this one.
The longer review
Keaton plays Johnnie Gray, a railroad engineer in Georgia whose two loves are his locomotive and a young woman named Annabelle Lee. When the war starts, he's turned down by the army and called a coward. When Union spies steal his train, with Annabelle aboard, he goes after them alone.
The structure is what makes it work. The first half is Johnnie chasing the train north, and the second half is Johnnie chasing back south with the other side after him. Nearly every gag from the first half is set up to return in the second, reversed or heightened. A cannon that won't aim right, a log on the tracks, a car that slips its coupling: things you laughed at once become the setups for bigger laughs later. It's tidy in a way few comedies attempt.
The other thing is that it's all real. Those are actual steam engines doing actual work, and Keaton is on them, running along the roof, sitting on the coupling rod as the wheels start to turn. The bridge collapse near the end sent a real locomotive into a river, one of the most expensive single shots of the silent era. You can feel the weight.
It's loosely based on the Great Locomotive Chase of 1862, and the film sides with the Confederacy without much thought, which is the one thing that dates it. The movie flopped on release. Today it's routinely named among the best films ever made, and after a rewatch that seems about right.
Before you watch
Several good restorations exist with recorded orchestral scores. Running times run from about 67 to 79 minutes depending on the version and frame rate.