The General (1926)

Description

Included among the “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die”, Buster Keaton always said that this was his favourite of his own movies. The American Film Institute ranked this as the #18 Greatest Movie of All Time. It was the first inclusion of this film on the list. Buster Keaton plays Johnny Gray, a Southern railroad engineer who loves his train engine, The General, almost as much as he loves Annabelle Lee. When the opening shots of the Civil War are fired at Fort Sumter, Johnny tries to enlist — and he is deemed too useful as an engineer to be a soldier. All Johnny knows is that he’s been rejected, and Annabelle, thinking him a coward, turns her back on him. When Northern spies steal the General (and, unwittingly, Annabelle), the story switches from drama and romance to adventure mixed with Keaton’s trademark deadpan humour as he uses every means possible to catch up to the General, thwart the Yankees, and rescue his darling Annabelle — for starters. As always, Keaton performs his own stunts, combining his prodigious dexterity, impeccable comic timing, and expressive body language to convey more emotion than the talkies that were soon to dominate cinema – all without the safety of special effects and CGI. This makes Keaton’s death-defying leaps all the more breathtaking. The first try at getting the cannonball to shoot out of the cannon into the cab caused the ball to shoot with too much force. To cause it to shoot into the cab of the engine correctly, Buster Keaton had to count out the grains of gunpowder with tweezers. Although this film is a comedy, the real life incident it was based upon was later filmed by Walt Disney as a drama “The Great Locomotive Chase” (1956).