#18 - The General

Ah, my first silent film experience. I've only tried watching a silent film once in my life. I could not stand it, and bowed out gracefully at the seven-minute mark. This movie was different.

From the opening sequence, I was inexplicably invested in the characters. Buster Keaton, an actor trained in Vaudeville, plays Johnnie Gray, a resident of Marietta, Georgia, who is refused enlistment because the Confederacy thinks he would be better used as a train engineer. No one understands this logic, Johnnie included, and he is branded a coward and deserter for not enlisting. He even loses his love for it.

One year after the war started, Union strategists plan the hi-jacking and theft of a train traveling from Marietta to Chattanooga. As they drive the train they plan to burn down every bridge, thus cutting off the Confederate supplies drastically. The train they plan to steal just happens to be Johnnie's train, and his love interest just happens to be riding it that day, heading North to see her father who was wounded in battle.

When the Union spies successfully overtake 'The General' (the name of the train), they incur an unexpected hostage: the love interest stayed on the train while everyone else went into the town for dinner. When Johnnie sees that people are stealing his train, he follows them in another train. What follows is a series of hilarious, well-timed sabotages and strategies to catch up with the hijacked train. Eventually, Johnnie of course catches up with the train and is able to take it back safely, saving his love interest and thus making her see that he is not a coward after all.

When this movie first came out in theaters, it was a major flop. The production costs were high because of all the train sequences, but no one seemed to enjoy the finished product. One theory behind the reasoning for this dislike was that the movie seemed to lean toward the Confederate side -- even though it had been 62 years since the Civil War had ended, people apparently still felt strongly about it.

The movie is a brilliant mix of comedy and action. Buster Keaton's facial expressions are so vivid and say so much without words, it makes it easy to see how silent films worked. The movie actually had me laughing out loud a few times, a rarity when I'm watching a movie by myself -- even the funniest in cinema history.

For me, this movie is all about what is pleasing to the audience -- a few jokes mixed in with some suspense that actually seems plausible and yet is still interesting to watch. These two elements combine to make a truly enjoyable film, and by far the best silent film I've ever seen all the way through (even though it's only the first).