General, The (1926)
The General (1926), written and directed by Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton.
Johnnie Gray loves two things: his girl Annabelle Lee and his locomotive, "The General". When Union raiders steal both he'll have to develop action hero moves to get them back and warn Southern forces of an impending attack.
The only dialogue I remember from Bertolucci's porn-like The Dreamers is an argument between serious film buffs. The American is boggled that the Frenchman thinks Chaplin is funnier than Keaton.
One watches this with several simultaneous dimensions of astonishment:
Buster Keaton. Well-known for his dead-pan comedy style, it always amazes me how much he communicates with his expressions and postures. It sometimes seems so contemporary that I wonder how much of modern comic mugging derives from him: that slow blink when seeing something unbelievable, or looking sideways to make sense of difficulties. It probably came from earlier stage performers.
His nonstop dangerous-as-hell stunts on the moving train. Seriously: he jumps around on a few tons of moving steel as if it were nothing. Stunt men? Forget about it.
Just when you think they've done it all, they drop a running locomotive through a high collapsing trestle bridge into the river. They really did it.
Nostalgia for something I never experienced: the Steam Age. Do you see how well the brakes work on that engine? He runs it back and forth as if it were an automobile.
That special look you get at the older country in silent films: the locations scruffier, less dressed.
Finally, the joy at being able to have something like this on home video. We're used to seeing silent films in rough shape, and this is quite a few steps above that.
Inspired by the real Civil War Great Locomotive Chase. The original wartime locomotive still exists in a Georgia museum.
Available on Blu-ray from Kino. Stunning image quality for a 90-year-old film. Three music tracks. The film is in the public domain; previous home video editions tended to be pretty sad.
Kino applied tinting which was not part of the original film, although often done in the silent era. I have no objections.
Some details of the mastering effort: Interview: Bret Wood Discusses Keaton's The General on Blu-ray. "It is Kino's new policy that films should be released on Blu-ray without digital noise reduction, so that what the viewer gets is an accurate representation of what the 35mm film looks like, grain and all."
