The Symmetry of Buster Keaton’s The General
Note: This is the hundred-and-thirty-sixth in a series of historical/critical essays examining the best in film from each year. Essentially, I am watching films from the beginning of cinematic history that interest me and/or hold some critical or cultural impact. My personal, living list of favorites is being created at Mubi, showcasing five films per year. All this being explained, what follows is an examination of my favorite 1926 film, THE GENERAL, directed by Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton.
“A comedian does funny things,” Buster Keaton said. “A good comedian does things funny.” I’m skeptical of seemingly non-sourced quotes like this, but good lord is it an incredible distinction. And this concept is best applied, amid Keaton’s own work, to THE GENERAL, his dramatic/comic masterpiece.
What is so striking about THE GENERAL is its exquisite structure, as finely chiseled and majestic as the Great Stoneface’s own visage. I do mean in performance as well as, well, more shallowly; Keaton looks like a snack and a half in THE GENERAL with his Civil War-era long locks. This personal flair is a microcosm of the incredible attention to detail Keaton lavished on the film. To borrow a phrase from an old studio executive by way of King Vidor, a phrase I will probably now use for all time, “a tree is a tree.” People have pointed out historical inaccuracies in THE GENERAL, but the general (haha) feeling of the thing is so authentic that only the most hardened buzzkills would deny the aesthetic commitment of the movie.
But yes, the narrative structure. After watching THE GENERAL, the single word that kept floating into my mind was “symmetrical.” That might not be a word often used to sell comedies, but then, THE GENERAL was not a typical comedy. At the time of its release…OK wait, I should mention here that the film premiered in America in 1927 but received special screenings in Tokyo on December 31, 1926, which combined with the fact that it was completed in 1926, led me to assign it to 1926; you’ll see both years attributed to the film, however. Anyways, at the time of THE GENERAL’s release, critics generally derided it and it was a box office failure, right after Keaton’s highest-grossing release, BATTLING BUTLER (1926). Perhaps this success convinced Keaton to be more creatively daring, and maybe more importantly, convinced his producer Joe Schenck to put down the money for one of (if not the) the most expensive silent comedies ever made.
Alright, I keep getting sidetracked. But the context of THE GENERAL’s production is important. The movie was a concerted effort to make a different kind of comedy, a comedy that carried dramatic weight and built its gags more slowly and centered them around a central theme: trains. Keaton is now famous for his vehicular comedy, and THE GENERAL is the apotheosis of this brand of Keaton comedy. He couched this humor in a war, not always the most hilarious of situations. And he based the film on a true story about a locomotive chase that took place during the Civil War, drawing out the high drama of the action and fusing it to his comedy to create a film that succeeds on so many levels.
Keaton shifts the heroism from the Union to the Confederacy in his adaptation of the tale, a curious and troubling decision, one he made because he felt like audiences would not like to see the Confederates as villains. Eleven years out from THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915), perhaps he was right. But here is our first example of symmetry: the original, full, true, dramatic story (THE GREAT LOCOMOTIVE CHASE by William Pittenger) followed the Union, and Keaton mirrored it to the Confederacy for his comic take. The Confederates are the intended heroes, certainly, but a consistent hum of ridicule lies just below the surface of their every action. Of course, the same goes for the Union soldiers. It’s the most difficult aspect of THE GENERAL for me to read, quite frankly, this apparent celebration of the Confederacy.
The second and most clear example of symmetry in THE GENERAL is how it implements its train chases. Here’s the basic breakdown of the film:
- Buster (unintentionally) saves himself from Confederate recruitment
- Buster chases Union soldiers
- Buster saves the girl (Marion Mack)
- Union soldiers chase Buster
- Buster saves the day
Really the key here is that the film is primarily built upon two long, exhilarating train chase sequences, filled with tremendous gags and incredible stunts that were actually performed by Keaton. The most famous of set pieces is a real train falling into the water from a real (built for the movie) collapsing bridge. It’s a tremendous shot, also a perfect glimpse of the natural beauty that Keaton and co-director Clyde Bruckman put a premium on for THE GENERAL. Within these symmetrical chase sequences, Keaton makes the strongest case for a “dramedy” or action comedy long before those terms were employed.
Finally, Keaton’s interplay with his leading lady, Marion Mack, stands as a more equal relationship than you might think. It has been said that Keaton used his co-leads as props, and that is still true to some extent in THE GENERAL. But if there was one thing I took away from the relationship between Johnnie Gray and Annabelle Lee, it’s that they are both ridiculously unaware and ingenious in equal measure.
With THE GENERAL, Keaton embodied his own quote by doing otherwise dramatic or action-packed things with a comedic grace that almost overshadows the incredible storytelling and technical beats that the film hits over and over. Orson Welles called THE GENERAL the best Civil War film ever made for its dedication to capturing the period, coming second only to the contemporary work of photographer Matthew Brady in simulating the sentiment of the war. I think I agree with Mr. Welles to a certain extent, but maybe not in quite the same way as he intended. THE GENERAL not only succeeded with a certain period-appropriate authenticity, it also elevated the realism to comic proportions and provided a sentimental, if distorted, view of the war. It’s a much more effective piece of propaganda than even THE BIRTH OF A NATION, but its message is not explicitly obscene, nor even specifically laid out. THE GENERAL is Keaton’s most nuanced film, balanced perfectly on either side of a series of scales, a masterpiece in filmmaking that truly feels like an accomplishment unmatched in its own particular way.
