The General

During the Civil War, the Southern engineer Johnnie Gray loves two things: his fiancée and his locomotive, the General. When Northern spies steal the train he goes after both of them alone. Buster Keaton directed and starred, working from a real event, the Great Locomotive Chase. He said so himself in 1963: he took an actual happening out of the history books. It was shot in Oregon in the summer of 1926. The production arrived with eighteen freight cars of material: Civil War cannons, rebuilt passenger cars, stagecoaches, houses, wagons and labourers. Accidents were constant; Keaton was knocked unconscious once, there were train crashes, and fires spread into nearby farmland. The famous bridge sequence was filmed in front of thousands of spectators. Keaton used six cameras, and it remains the most expensive stunt of the silent era. It was beaten up on release. Variety called it a flop and Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times judged that the fun is not exactly plentiful. Against a 750,000 dollar budget it took 474,264 domestically, and the failure cost Keaton his independence. In 1989 the Library of Congress placed it in the National Film Registry, in the same intake as Citizen Kane, Casablanca and The Wizard of Oz. Who it is for: anyone who wants silent comedy and real stunt work. Who it is not for: viewers who mind which side the film is on. Keaton's hero is a Confederate soldier and the film says nothing about it.