Silent-ember: The General (Dir Clyde Bruckman & Buster Keaton, 1h 15m, 1926)

There's something of a snobbishness towards silent cinema. Along with films shot in black and white, it comes in for something of a generational divide, an inability, from many of people of my generation (and indeed before), to watch films in black and white, or indeed without sound, as though these films are somehow incomplete without sound and colour, or else the product of a less discerning age, or simply dull plonky-piano accompanied melodrama with dodgy over-acting, ropey plots, bad special effects, and short runtimes. Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. Silent cinema, simply put, acts as the foundations of the entire medium, from the beginning of comedy in fast-paced slapstick, to historical epics on a scale that even modern cinema struggles to match, to science fiction where superb acting and inspired visuals stand in for dialogue, and towering biopics that push the very edges of the medium to breaking point, to, of course, the birth of animation.

Where better to start on this month-long odyssey through silent cinema, than with Buster Keaton? Alongside Chaplin and Lloyd, he is certainly the "face" of silent cinema, the trio's mixture of slapstick, fast paced comedy, and a remarkable amount of pathos in ther everyman heroes making them icons, but Keaton turned it into an artform. Born into vaudeville, from which early silent comedy takes much of its early influence (and certainly many of its early comedy icons, including Keaton himself, Laurel, Hardy, and Chaplin)-indeed, cinema itself started as interludes in vaudeville-and with his father the business partner of no less that Harry Houdini, it was hardly surprising that Keaton became, like his father, a master of slapstick and knockabout comedy. It's here that Keaton's deadpan performance, and his mastery of pratfalls, and often spectacular stunts, are utterly honed.

Heading to New York with his mother, as his father's alcoholism raged out of control, Keaton promptly becomes involved, despite his reservations, with the early silent film pioneer, Fatty Arbuckle, who he quickly becomes friends with, and both performer and second-unit director, making 14 films, halted by World War I, between 1917 and 1920. Come 1920, The Saphead (one of a jawdroppingly large number of remakes and adaptions of the play, The Henrietta), sees Keaton becoming leading man, and his star power grow, before he embarks on a still-astonishing run of 19 two-reel (short) films in just two and a half years, in which he stars as well as directs. honing his craft further, before he moves onto feature films, releasing Sherlock Jr, The Navigator, and Go West among seven films between 1923 and 1926, where Keaton played pratfalling every men, stepping, falling, and hanging, through incredible setpieces.

Here, thus, once again, vaudeville's fractured, plot-lite concept takes centre stage-it is, after all, the setpiece that is important, rather than the story. The Three Ages features Keaton nearly falling to his death, and driving a car that collapses around him, Sherlock Jr features several stunt, including one where Keaton broke his neck (something he wouldn't discover till 1933), The Navigator features an entire ship being nigh-sunk, and Our Hospitality features Keaton nearly being swept down a river to his death. This, of course, was an era before stunt performers, with Keaton producing many of his death defying jumps, leaps, and assorted mayhem, for real on camera.

The General is no exception to this. Depicting, in comedic terms, the real-life story of the Civl War era Great Locomotive Chase, in which the titular General, the beloved steam train of Johnnie Gray (Keaton), is captured by Union troops, he must give chase in the Texas, across enemy lines, to recapture his train, stop the Union plan to destroy bridges and cut off the Confederate supply lines, and reunite with his girlfriend, captured by the Union, so the film begins with, in broad brushstrokes, the twin loves of its hero, Johnnie. First is the General itself, one of three fully operational 19th century steam trains used in the film-one of which was entirely destroyed in a colossal crash-here, Keaton, together with his five man-screenwriting team, ibues the train itself with a great sense of character, often dominating the shot, or steaming across it, and it plays location to many of the best stunts of the film.

Against this, we have Johnnie's other great love, Annabelle, and it is the relationship between these two that this that essentially drives the film's relatively narrow plot-with his inability to sign up in the Confederate army, as he is too important in his current job, being misintepreted by Annabelle (and indeed much of her family), as a coward, and she turns him down, demanding that the next time she sees him, he must be in uniform. The film jumps forward a year, and rapidly gathers pace, as the General is stolen, with Annabel, travelling to see her injured father, left in the carriages, and thus captured by the Union army. Jonnie springs into action and commandeers another train, the Texas, but leaves the Confederate soldiers as the train sets off without them.

Here, the film gathers pace, with the Union destroying the rails, leaving carriages in their wake, and thus the duel at the centre of the Great Locomotive Chase gathers pace, with Johnnie as plucky underdog chasing down the Union, as they cross over into enemy territory. Quickly surrounded by soldiers, he escapes into the woods, and soon comes across the Union army, plotting to attack and cut off the Conferate army. Rescuing Annabelle, and making his escape on his beloved General, the film gathers pace again, the chase now essentially in reverse, with the Texas, now commandeered by the Unuon forces, giving chase, as the Union attacks, with Johnnie finally destroying the vital bridge into Confederate territory, the Texas (for real) crashing into the river, and the Union forces are pushed back. Johnnie becomes a fully fledged soldier, wins Annabelle's admiration, and the film ends on the comic image of Johnnie having to break from his kiss with her routinely to salute passing troops.

The General thus, is a film of two parts; one is that of its sweet, if overly simplistic love story against the background of a (largely, and in the hindsight of 2021, overly sanitised for comedic purposes), Civil War. Here, Keaton's hero is an almost endearingly hangdog man, a gentle soul, largely tied to his engine, and his love for Annabelle, and Keaton's unusually long-haired appearance, his often perfectly deadpan face, and his height compared to some of the other actors giving him a fragile everyman quality, especially during the scene where he tries, unsuccessfully, to sneak back into the queue for enlistment, only to be discovered and whisked away. It's only when he is forced into action, into the pursuit, that he feels comfortable.

We see him go to death-defying lengths, for both himself and his engine, to rescue his twin beloveds from the Union, as he races after them, leaping onto the front of the cowcatcher at one point, in perhaps the film's most famous sequence, or, in the film's tensest moments, on foot trying to avoid the Union troops as he makes his way into their camp.Yet, Keaton tempers this with humour, his pratfalls, his comedic deadpan nature. He wins out in the end, not from being a brave soldier, but in outthinking and out manuvering the enemy in his plucky train.

Against this, Keaton sets some of the best stunts ever shot in black and white cinema. There's something at once-and one cannot help but say it-mad, at least from a 21st Century perspective, where actors performing their own stunts is high-verite, and worthy of being in the film's marketing, than the norm, to Keaton risking life and limb in this film-several of its greatest stunts could have seen him maimed or killed if he stood or fell, or hung, in the wrong place, or if he had moved a few centimetres this way or that. It is a film of utter mastery, where Keaton's dexterity and ability to take a fall are as vital as its plot and characters.

We see a steamtrain plunge off a collapsing bridge, a stunt done utterly for real, which, together with crashes, destruction, and Keaton and Bruckman's eye for detail saw them edit the very landscape around them for the best shots, made this the highest budget black and white film of the silent era (towering over all three of the other films we will come on to talk about), only dwarfed by Cecil B Demille's absolutely insanely scaled Technicolor 1923 epic The Ten Commandments, (whose buried set can still be found outside of Santa Barbara, California). But this ambition came at a cost. Keaton lost much of his cinematic autonomy, and whilst Steamboat Bill Jr, two years later would form the capstone atop his silent action films, and contain perhaps his most famous stunt, it is the swansong as an independent artist for Keaton, as the studio system took hold, and sound would relegate Keaton to a bit part player, or a gag writer to, among others, the Marx Brothers.

Yet, The General steams on. Welles would later call it his favourite film of all time, and together with Kane,and eight others, The General would be inducted into the Libary of Congress in their first cinematic intake. It is peerless in silent comedy, a colossal, ambitious, death-defying charge of a film into enemy territory, driven by love-for a woman and a train-in which Keaton, the eternal everyman, comes out on top, once again

Rating: Highly Recommended

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