THE GENERAL

Last night I saw my favorite film of all time, Buster Keatons' The General for the 13th time. I own a copy of it for petes sake, but when I saw that it was going to be shown on Arte, I had to watch it. It was the newly restored version with the new soundtrack performed by the Tokyo Symphony. I am like a little kid with this film, every time I see it , it is like I am seeing for the first time. Some parts are so familiar, but others are never as I remember them. When I talk about Buster Keaton and his work, I get emotional, I drive my friends nuts with my little obsession. So now it's your turn.


If you have never seent this movie, please give it a view. It is 80 years old this year and seen in the historical sense of the cinema, it is a breathtaking masterpiece. It's a story about the Civil War. Buster Keaton is the engineer of a railroad engine called The General in the South. War breaks out and a group of Northern soldiers infiltrate and steal The General so they can sabotage the rail lines for a strategic battle.

They kidnap Busters girl in the mix and Buster chases them in another engine. The results are a story that works as an adventure but as high silent comedy film art at the same time. The attention to detail is meticulous. The look of the film is as if Mathew Bradys' Civil War photographs began to move. The art of Keaton as a story teller and director is at its height. The framing of the scenes is forever inventive. The sheer bravado of the gags is mind boggling. So many of the physical gags are on the order of "get it right the first time or we die!". He stages a full blown battle scene at the finale.


Things really blow up! Keaton was in my mind, the greatest of the silent comics. He planned gags that were death defying. He was a little guy, but his stunts were almost super human! All of this without cracking a smile.
He was raised literally on stage in Vaudeville. His family's act consisted of an evolving sketch involving a drunken Irish family and he was an animated prop thrown about the stage. He learned how to take a fall when he was 4 year old. He started acting in silents with Fatty Arbuckle. He learned how films were made, how cameras worked, how to cut and edit and direct. For a few years, he was really successful. His classic period included films like Our Hospitality, The Navigator, The Three Ages of Man, Sherlock Jr., The Projectionist, One Week, The Playhouse and Cops. He was given free rein to make his films. Strangely enough, The General was badly recieved and the studio lost money on it. His marriage to the daughter of the Studio Head went sour. As his artistic freedom was curtailed, he began to drink. Talkies arrived and though he had a very distinctive gravely speaking voice, so much of his personality and skills revolved around silent films that he was a fish out of water. He ended up playing second fiddle to Jimmy Durante and doing other small roles. He ended up living in a trailer on the lot of the studio. Then years of obscurity, most of the copies of his great films were destroyed. It wasn't until the late 50's that a cache of the films were rediscovered and restored and looked at again with fresh eyes. In my opinion, his work was too sophisticated for the audiences of his time. He presented too much.
He worked again in the 60's. He appeared in Richard Lesters' A Funny Thing Happened on the Way To The Forum with Phil Silvers and Zero Mostel, but died in 1966. If you haven't seen his films, please take a look. You will not believe the physical gags in Cops, a truly hilarious film called the best short comedy ever made or the Technical tour de force of The Playhouse in which he plays every member of a stage company, the entire audience and an undisciplined chimpanzee. In one scene he is nine characters at the same time. This was an unprecedented experiment in film editing in 1921 which totally succeeds as great comedy.
As far as my 13th viewing of The General last night, I loved it, but I was a little disappointed with the new Tokyo Symphonic soundtrack. I missed the simplicity of the Robert Israel music I was familiar with.
Buster Keaton, Old Stoneface, the absolute greatest silent comic and filmaker of his time!