The General [1926]

Type: Silent Movie, Comedy

Starring: Buster Keaton

The origin of slapstick comedy in movies? This movie is 100 years old but the laughs are pretty timeless.  Keaton plays a train engineer who loves his train and Annabelle, a woman in his town. The movie is set at the outbreak of the civil war and when a general muster is called for the town Keaton tries to enlist (to impress his lady mostly) and he is deemed to important as a train engineer to fight on the front lines.

He tries several times to enlist but is rebuffed before he leaves rejected (the famous shot of Keaton sitting glumly on the train wheels as the train starts to move).  The union general sends some troops undercover to steal a train at the end of the line and then take it along the line destroying infrastructure on the way. They decide to steal Keaton’s train – and by happenstance his woman is on the train looking for something from her trunk.  He proceeds to chase the train using a variety of methods before commandeering a confederate train to chase them. He finally catches up with them and is hiding under a table when he hears plans for a union surprise raid and he sees that Anabelle is there! She’s been captured by the union and is held hostage.

He rescues her and they escape into the night.. When day breaks they see they are near a union train depot and lo and behold his train ‘The General’ is there! They sneak aboard and steal the train heading back to confederate lines being chased all the way. 

After setting a fire on a critical bridge they alert the confederate army who mount a counterattack on the union and drive them off and the Keaton gets the girl and a promotion to lieutenant

3/5

I really enjoyed the comedy elements of this movie – and Keaton did all of his own stunts, some of which were really straight dangerous! The plot existed to serve the comedy but was passable but the treatment of the actress was pretty poor (She was the inept comic relief who was dumb as a box of rocks) — yeah yeah I get it was the 1920s but it was still jarring to see.