This summer, MovieJawn is counting down our 25 favorite action movies of all time! We will be posting a new entry each day! See the whole list so far here.

by Rosalie Kicks, Old Sport & Editor in Chief

“There were two loves in his life: his engine and...”

My dearly departed film pal, Orson Welles went on record about this picture saying, “[The General is] the greatest comedy ever made...and perhaps the greatest film ever made.".

For a film from 1926 to grace our action countdown, ya know it has to be good. The General was produced at the end of the silent era and is based on an actual event that happened during the American Civil War. The screenplay was adapted from a 1889 memoir, “The Great Locomotive Chase” penned by William Pettenger. Buster Keaton would co-direct the motion picture with frequent collaborator Clyde Bruckman. Buster was an avid train junkie and, after reading the book, even tried to acquire the train mentioned within the pages to utilize in his film. The request was denied when it was learned that the motion picture would be comedic in nature.

The General tells the tale of Johnnie Gray (Buster Keaton) a southern engineer that operates the famed General train in Marietta, Georgia. It is immediately known that Johnnie holds two things closest to his heart, one being his train and the second being his special lady friend, Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack). With the announcement of the Civil War, Annabelle informs Johnnie that she wants nothing to do with him unless he enlists. (Un)fortunately, for Johnnie the enlistor sees him too valuable as an engineer to risk sending him to war, causing Annabelle to leave him in the dust. In the end, Johnnie does find himself in the ranks when he unintentionally foils the heist of the enemy to commandeer the General.

As a whole, The General is quite the feat and was made during the time period of 1920 to 1929. Before there was computer-generated imagery (CGI) there was Buster Keaton. Many believe his best work was during this era due to the lack of interference from the studio system. However, it would be The General that would lead to Buster’s downfall. Upon its initial release to cinemas, the film was seen as a catastrophic, financial blunder and received mixed reviews from film goers and critics alike. Despite the picture having more of a dramatic flair than comedic, it still brought to question why Keaton thought it was acceptable to make light of the American Civil War. In terms of story, The General combined Buster’s love of physical stunts/antics (he did ALL of his own stunts in the picture) and trains. It is the mix of these two passions that make this an astounding action picture. Possibly one of the most well known action scenes in the film was that of a locomotive chase that made use of a cannon. No matter how many times I watch these sequences they are still cause for me to catch my breath. Witnessing Buster climb a top of a moving train is anxiety inducing but also quite thrilling. To think he performed many of these dangerous stunts practically is just mind boggling, especially given that many were done with one take due to the cost and technical difficulty to reshoot. Buster saw himself as an engineer, which explains how acrobatic feats of this nature could be achieved. One must be a skilled planner, a person that anticipates various probabilities. Yet, Buster had no fear; he was always up for adventure and clearly gave it his all in the name of the picture. Even some of today’s most recent, bloated Hollywood action blockbusters can not hold a candle to the edge of the seat entertainment that Buster created in The General. Regrettably, this film would be his last motion picture in which he would have absolute and total control.

It could have been the almost thirty-eight miles of film that was shot for The General that sealed Buster’s fate in 1928, when he would be pressured to sign a deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. There was a consensus that he needed some reeling in due to the financial loss from many of his pictures. This decision would inevitably change his life for the worse. Other silent filmmakers of the time such as Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd warned Buster about the signing, stating that his independence would go out the window. Sadly, their predictions were right and Buster would often recall this mistake as the downfall of his career.

The General was proclaimed as being Buster’s favorite of all the movies he made. Part of me wonders if Buster would still feel the same about it now? Or if he just always held it in such a high regard due to it being the last time he felt in control of his art. Being that the picture is set during the Civil War, and in some way perpetuates the terrible/horrific ideals that come along with all that, it makes for a rather lackluster story. Admittedly, one does not watch this for the story but to experience Buster Keaton. He is in top form, achieving the impossible with precision, is extremely well dressed (I absolutely loved the suspenders) and it is easy to see that he always brought his best stone face to the picture.

The General is in public domain, so you can find it on the wild world of the internet for free. Archive.org has a crisp copy here.