The General

The General puts a stolen locomotive at the centre of a rescue and finds enough trouble along the tracks to sustain an excellent comedy. Directors Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman understand the pleasure of watching someone do a difficult job while circumstances keep making it harder. Their Civil War chase gives Johnnie Gray little chance to stand back and consider his position. He has an engine and a fiancée to recover, and his concentration on those tasks supplies much of the humour.

Buster Keaton plays Johnnie with a seriousness that makes the physical comedy feel necessary. The still face never asks us to applaud the cleverness of a gag; the body is occupied with surviving it. His attention to the locomotive makes the machinery interesting in itself, because he appears to understand what it needs even when events have got beyond him. We believe in that competence, which makes it more disconcerting when something goes wrong.

Cinematographers Devereaux Jennings and Bert Haines make the railway action easy to follow without making it feel safe. The framing allows us to judge the size of the locomotive against the person trying to master it, and that difference supplies much of the tension. The location work gives the chase space, with distance that has to be covered rather than wished away between cuts. We held our breath during Buster Keaton’s train stunts: seeing his body working against that machinery made the risk difficult to dismiss.

Sherman Kell and Buster Keaton’s editing keeps the sequence of problems clear. We can understand why a practical decision causes further trouble, so the chase does not need to pause and explain each new predicament. The cutting also lets a joke finish before pushing Johnnie towards the next demand on his attention. Over 79 minutes, the repeated business of pursuit gives the film a firm rhythm, though its insistence can make the quieter human exchanges feel like interruptions.

The screenplay by Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman gives Marion Mack less to work with as Annabelle Lee. Her character’s ineffectiveness provides comic trouble, but repeatedly making the woman an obstacle to the capable man limits how much interest the romance can hold. Marion Mack gives the partnership enough sincerity to stop it becoming merely a nuisance. Even so, we spend more time attending to Johnnie’s engine than wishing the couple a moment together, and the film has largely arranged that preference for us.

What distinguishes this from routine action comedy is how often the excitement and the laugh arrive through the same physical problem. The film does not have to stop the pursuit to insert a joke about it. Nor does Johnnie become so capable that the difficulties cease to matter. There is pleasure in understanding the railway well enough to anticipate disaster, then watching a man whose expression suggests he would prefer simply to get on with his work.

The film asks us to pay attention to where things are, and that is a welcome demand. Letting our eyes wander towards a second screen would cost us the pleasure of watching the problems develop. There is no homework required, and no obligation to admire it for its age. Give it the largest screen in the house and put the telephone somewhere else.