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Buster Keaton: General
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The amazing, athletic, great stone-faced comedy of Buster Keaton shines in this five-disc collection. Keaton's earliest work supporting Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle can be seen in the hilarious short "The Garage" (1919); Keaton's own famous shorts are spotlighted, including "The Paleface" (1922); Buster's most famous feature, "The General" (1927), is included, as well as the early talkies "Parlor, Bedroom and Bath" (1931) and "Speak Easily" (1932), and more. 6 hrs. total. Standard; Soundtrack: English Dolby Digital mono. Silent with music score.
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Buster Keaton plays Johnny Gray, a Southern railroad engineer who loves his train engine, The General, almost as much as he loves Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack). 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 humor 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 stars of any of the talkies that were soon to dominate cinema. ~ Emru Townsend, All Movie Guide
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Keaton's attitude was one of metaphysical stoicism. He adjusted to the world around him -men, women, machines, nature- simply because they were there, not because he wanted to belong or conquer. Keaton was just as happy with a train (The General) or horse (Go West) than with his requisite romantic lead. In a piece that single-handedly rekindled critical interest in silent comedy, "Comedy's Greatest Era" (1958), James Agee said of Keaton: "Keaton worked strictly for laughs, but his work came from so far inside a curious and original spirit that he achieved a great deal more." The Keaton character seemed to possess an internal design. Which is perhaps why while all the other great comedians took time to find the character that best suited them, Keaton was Keaton from the very first moment he walked into the frame in Arbuckle's The Butcher Boy (1917).
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Buster Keaton is a railroad engineer in charge of a small but beautiful engine, The General. When war erupts, he seeks to enlist -- but is rejected on the grounds that a good railroad engineer is more valuable to the South than another foot-soldier.
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In film after film, Keaton does difficult and dangerous things and keeps the poker face. His philosophy is embodied in his body language: The world throws its worst at him, but he is plucky and determined, ingenious and stubborn, and will do his best. Walter Kerr, in his definitive book "The Silent Clowns," writes of Keaton's "stillness of emotion as well as body, a universal stillness that comes of things functioining well, of having achieved harmony." When Harold Lloyd dangled from a clock face far above the street, he intended to terrify his audience. When Keaton sat on the front of a moving locomotive in "The General" and attempted to knock one railroad tie off the tracks with another, he could have been crushed beneath the train, but he presents the action as a strategy, not a stunt.
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Known as "The Great Stone Face," Keaton got big laughs out of his relentlessly blank expression in silent film comedies like The Saphead (1920), Sherlock, Jr. (1924), and his famous The General (1927). Keaton was one of silent film's most famous comedians; his popularity waned in the 1930s, but he made a nostalgic flurry of films before his 1966 death.
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