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In essence, Buster Keaton held himself far better than other pre 1940s comedians. That is, his facial expression was always ’stone like’ no matter the context he was placed in. His movies tend to outlast his contemporaries, especially against the backdrop of his closest competition, Charlie Chaplin. But in this case, Keaton certainly was one eigth of a notch ahead of Charlie with all of his features frozen in ‘serious’ mode.
Annabelle Lee and his train engine lover are the only love interests in a South railway players life in ‘The General.’ During the earlier sequences of the film, Annabelle Lee dubs over the character’s of his childhood friend. While calling out for Keaton to interrupt his rant.
Keaton arrives to her doorstep while using the back of his pant knees to shine his shoes. First spotting his lover, while then catching view of Annabelle only just before she shuts the door. Any other comedian would have exaggerated everything, but instead Keaton lightly acted upon the situation with only exaggerated interest.
They move inside. He positions himself next to her on the couch. They all notice the boys coming in after them. There are some hints of displeasure on his face. He stands, grabs his hat like he is going out, and articles the door so drastically that one would imagine the children were his visitors. The children step out and he slams the door behind them.
He’s not a person out for a laugh; he is fully engaged in a call to his most adored person in the whole world. That is what’s so funny. This adds to the reason as to why the most known shot from the movie is effective the one where he is sitting at the drive rod of a large engine with no hope of getting peace from life having been turned down by the woman he loves. He is seated at it and, as the engine is set in motion, it raises and then drops him. But he is not aware because he is lost in his thoughts of Annabelle Lee.
These shots serve to build the cover of the next person in focus, which is of a man who takes himself too seriously, which he will do continue to do throughout the film. We do not find Keaton to be laughable; rather, we sympathize with him.
Until this day, ‘The General’ has stood out as one of the most expensive silent comedies of its time. Apart from being an epic of its own, it contains an accurate historical recreation of the Civil War. The Gorgonian chasm which is depicted in the film has a real locomotive that falls from a bridge that is on fire. The screenplay was outlined in an exquisite manner by William Pittenger who also starred in the film. The screenplay was based on a book titled, “The Great Locomotive Chase” which inspired the story onto a whole new level.When the movie begins, the war has been announced and Johnny Gray (Keaton) gets rejected by a rebel recruiting officer (he was an engineer to begin with, so his skills are better put to use there). “Do not talk to me until I see you in uniform,” Annabelle straight away tells him. Johnny now is the Chief Engineer of the General, a Southern locomotive. He is joined by Union spies who attempt to steal the train and, pursued by Johnny on foot, he tries to catch them with a side car, a bicycle, and finally another locomotive. Then the other side switches their train to Texas and the chase begins in reverse. Annabelle, who was a passenger on the stolen train, becomes a Union troop prisoner. Johnny saves her, and along with him, she witnesses the most thrilling chase in which the Texas train plunges into the gorge, which is said to still hold on to the rusted wreckage.
In principle, it doesn’t appear possible to have a chase that involves trains due to the fact the trains travel on tracks and one must always be behind the other one. Keaton is able to defy this logic with clever sequences of silent comic one after the other that are remarkable and it is necessary to add that he has never had a double and performed all his stunts, including the very dangerous ones with a trim acrobatic ease.
This helps him with ideas, keeping in mind the limitations of the trains. All the he appears to be doing in the back group is chopping wood. The trains in the middle of these sight gags have a lot of mystery since Keaton certainly thought was behind them only for his puzzlement to confirm their reappearance before him. This way, he sets up the geography so that he can scout them differently on the way back. One famous sequence with Keaton involves the cannon on the flat car that he wants to fire at the other train. He runs back to the locomotive after lighting the fuse and only then realizes that the cannon has turned and is now pointing straight at him.
One inspiration builds into another: He puts the tie in front of himself and, with the cannonball noise growing closer, he leaps over the cowcatcher of the moving Texas, which has no one at the wheel and is being driven at full throttle. The Union blokes toss another tie out on the tracks, and Keaton incredible accurate and has flawless timing. He knocks the first tie off and throws the other one with perfect aim. Yes, it is unbelievable, but think about the fact that Keaton’s survival hinges on sitting on the front of a massive engine locomotive and expecting to toss one tie away, so that one can smash the other out of the way, so he doesn’t get knocked out completely with the ties smashing onto his skull.
In the midst of these pursuit sequences, he accidentally wanders into a residence where the Northern commanders are formulating their plans, and he saves Annabelle Lee but not before Keaton sets up an epic golden film gag.
He is there, underneath the dining table, unnoticed, paying attention to what the Northerners are talking about. One of them is setting the tablecloth on fire while puffing on a cigar. Later, Annabelle Lee is taken into the room and we see Keaton’s eye looking through the hole he made and then the girl’s eye is shot as a reverse angle with Keating slowly using the hole to create a “found” eye shot. One of those famously ear piercing shots by Griffith in which a scene is focused on a specific element with the use of a circular frame.
“The General” which is one of the films Keaton directed, was ranked as the 10th film ever made by the reputation US based magazine “Sight & Sound.” Who knows if it is even Keaton’s greatest? Others might choose “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” (1928). Other of his great works are “Our Hospitality” (1923), “The Navigator” (1924), “Go West” (1925) and “The Cameraman” (1928) in which he starred as a bumbling newsreel photographer who, by sheer force of luck, ends up landing the job.
He was born in the year of 1897, the very year cinema was invented, and grew up in a vaudeville family. During the performance, he would be tossed around the stage, and was very much like W.C. Fields in the sense that he had a painful childhood apprenticeship that assisted him in honing his physical skills during set pieces. He began working in films alongside Fatty Arbuckle in 1917, and by 1920 he made his directorial debut with shorts. From 1920 to 1928 he produced a collection of works that stood side by side with the works of Chaplin. Some argue that it even surpasses them. This was done with limited funding and resources due to the fact that he was never as popular or well known as the Little Tramp.
Then came the Talkies. He made an unhappy deal with MGM which brought him an end to any sort of independent art. The rest of his life was described as a long second act. A second act that was so long, that he had to resort to doing a live half hour comic television series in Los Angeles during the 1940s. His genius was eventually rediscovered, and he made crucial works like Samuel Beckett’s Film back in 1965, and right before his death was celebrated with a retrospective at Venice being paramount one in 1966.
Today, I watch Keaton’s movies more than any other silent film. To me, they have a unique brilliant harmony where the story, character, and episode are so blended perfectly that they play like music. And even if they are filled with gags, it is rare to catch Keaton writing a scene around them, instead, he suffers in the small center of the hysteria of slapstick; reporter Karen Jaehne claims. And in the moment where special effects were just starting out, and “stunts” meant doing everything you were pretending to do on screen, Keaton was audacious and daring. There were times where he would have a house situated around him, collapse. Or he would swing off a waterfall to save a woman he loved, fall off trains, the list carries on. But he always did remains in character. He plays a serious, and deep thinker who has trust in his own devices.
“Charlie’s tramp was a bum with a bum’s philosophy,” is something he once stated. “As great as he was, he would want to steal given the chance. My little fellow, however, was a hardworking man, and truthful.” Such type of statements give a perfect description of his creations and the creators himself.
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