The General (1926)
First screened and reviewed in January 2026
Directors: Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton. Cast: Buster Keaton, Marion Mack, Frank Barnes, Charles Henry Smith, Frank Hagney, Glen Cavender, Jim Farley, Frederick Vroom, Joe Keaton, Mike Donlin, Tom Nawn, Elgin Lessley. Screenplay: Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman (based on a dramatic adaptation by Al Boasberg and Charles Henry Smith of the book Daring and Suffering: A History of the Great Railroad Adventure by William Pittenger). In Brief:
As suffused with moment-to-moment inspiration and humor as with grand-scale daring and energy. The O.G. action comedy?
VOR:⑤
Keaton's signature is indelible even as he and his co-director are pushing tone and performance in new directions. Dixie setting is a risk!
I decided yesterday to kick off the new year with a 100-year-old movie. And with My Undesirable Friends just behind me and The Sorrow and the Pity planned for the evening, some levity was worth its weight in gold. To nobody's surprise, Buster Keaton delivered!
If you can't get past Keaton playing an aspiring recruit to the Confederate Army—his name is even Johnnie Gray—and the whole plot being about him purposefully and bumblingly undermining the Union battalion to save the day for the Rebels, I am not going to blame you for moving right along. Though I'll also say that the actual politics of the Civil War are nowhere on the movie's mind, and it'd be hard to imagine a more ticklish spoofing of white male aspiration, of Southern heroism, or of a D.W. Griffith "Old Dixie" aesthetic, even if the film places us squarely by Johnnie's side. I was more than happy to be there, given Keaton's physical, logistical, and comedic ingenuity. Most of the first half is a train journey that gets repeated in the second, in reverse and under altered circumstances. That's more than enough context for Keaton's eye-popping stunts and cleverly escalated jokes, of which the particulars are often surprises even when the broad trajectory is clear.
With frequent co-writer Clyde Bruckman promoted this once to co-director, The General's comic sensibility is slightly altered from Keaton's other work. I often felt I was seeing him test out Chaplinesque or Harold Lloyd-like possibilities, since his deadpan is a little more animated than usual, the embattled romance at the center feels very Charlie, and the gags, premises, and set-pieces aren't quite as intricate as Keaton's usual. But this also meant I got to see new, sillier facets of Keaton's comic gift while still getting more than enough high-risk, big-payoff farcical derring-do—often while hurtling through space on one of the many trains and railcars that figure in the plot, but also underneath a dining room table, or at the top of a high, rickety bridge. A beat where Keaton has to jump over a live fire, only to end up in a different predicament altogether, is typical of the swift, scaled-down, but still uproarious and impressive feats he pulls off more or less constantly in The General.
Keaton didn't leap quite as neatly or land with such aplomb in real life: The General marked a downturn for him in commercial success and subsequent creative control, from which he never fully rebounded. I wonder if all the Rebel Army shenanigans worked against him, or if The General seemed more like a movie other comic stars might have undertaken. But I don't think any of them would have brought it off with nearly this much panache and careful calculation, and the movie has rightly amassed a greater reputation over the now-century since it was released. Happy 100th, Johnnie, you deeply misguided but somehow winning buffoon! Grade:A–
(I originally wrote this capsule on Letterboxd, where you can comment.)
