THE GENERAL (co-wri & co-dir by Buster Keaton, 75mns, USA, 1926)
Part of Secret Movie Club's Top 1000. A ridiculous number we know. But there are easily 1000 must see movies in cinema. Probably many of thousands. But this number feels right to us.
Billy Wilder said you can make a movie about a complex subject in a simple way or a simple subject in a complex way. But you can't make a movie about a complex subject in a complex way.
Words of wisdom when you drill down. So how to classify master comedian Buster Keaton's masterpiece THE GENERAL which at first appears to be a relatively simple subject made in a relatively simple way?
Simple in that the story is essentially one of Keaton, a train conductor, rescuing his beloved train, THE GENERAL, from enemy hands, rescuing his beloved girlfriend, Annabelle, from behind enemy lines, and bringing the love, the train, and himself back to friendly territory.
Complex or strange in that by today's standards, THE GENERAL has a very pro-confederacy Civil War angle. Keaton's Johnnie Gray and Marion Mack's Annabelle Lee are southerners. So we're asked to root for Confederates against the Northern Union Army.
But THE GENERAL isn't really centered or even that concerned with the mythological "lost cause ethos" of the South.
It's really an action-adventure comedy in the Keaton tongue about a seemingly hapless but secretly resourceful young man who overcomes mounting comedic obstacles and set pieces to prove himself to the woman he loves. This was the basic plot of so many Keatons.
Here though, the comedic potential is distilled to a minimalist essence. Half the movie finds Keaton on the train going into Northern Union territory. The other half finds Keaton and Annabelle going the other direction to get back to the friendly south.
MAD MAX filmmaker George Miller so recognized the brilliance of this simple structure as a skeleton for action sequences that he more or less adopted it for MAD MAX FURY ROAD.
Keaton's humour and his filmmaking genius were essentially one and the same. The jokes and gags in Keaton movies are often jaw dropping stunts well figured out, seemingly impossible special effects as magic tricks, and precise genius moviemaking.
Buster does have an immediately endearing recognizable character. Like Charlie Chaplin's irrepressible Tramp, Keaton's stone faced clown always seems to roll with life's brutal punches as if he has no other choice but to get the sh*t kicked out of him until he figures the puzzle at hand out.
We laugh because Keaton never breaks a smile nor sheds a tear no matter what is thrown in front of him. He just accepts it with a zen calmness and sets about trying to figure out how to deal with it.
And on that note, THE GENERAL is less laugh out loud funny and more marvel at every sequence with a stunned chuckle. It is so technically brilliant and daring, that our laughter is more from the sheer recognition of the chutzpah it took Keaton and his team to even dare to make such a movie in the first place.
Almost the entire film takes place on moving trains. All the stunts and set pieces are variations of Keaton doing seemingly death defying things as his train speeds down the track.
Layer onto this foreground risk-taking, wonderfully choreographed middle and background elements behind the train and you get pure cinema.
My favorite shots of the movie have always been the shots of Keaton atop his beloved GENERAL in the foreground trying to problem solve something while hundreds of soldiers fight the civil war on fields in the middle and back ground.
The different planes of action create essential cinema that action moviemakers like Miller, James Cameron, Peter Jackson all took to heart.
Keaton and Keaton movies are never really about the message or themes. And in this regard, they haven't aged the same as Chaplin's visionary humanist works which still feel emotionally on point (if sometimes heavy handed and didactic) near 100 years later. Keaton's character and movies are often ambivalent, indifferent, or confused, at best with their humanism and worldview. But this is made up for by such a thorough lack of sentimentalism or schmaltz that they can be enjoyed again and again for the sheer thrill of their moviemaking.
If Chaplin's movies are Victorian inflected human comedies, Keaton's movies are American car culture chrome drag races.
It's not that one is better than the other. Put the two approaches together and you probably get Steven Spielberg. But they are different and you learn different things from them.
Chaplin gets you to care, laugh, cry, engage, wants you to do better with your life, engage more actively with society around you. Keaton just wants you to marvel, gasp, giggle with disbelief and offer you an hour and change of sheer magic.
THE GENERAL is one of the all-time great action comedies. And from it comes almost all great American action ever since.
Craig Hammill is the founder/programmer of Secret Movie Club
