Fifty Before '50: THE GENERAL

 by JB

I will tell you the story of this remarkable film, the tale of “The Eleven Dips,” and much else besides.

Very few silent films are released on physical media these days. We should celebrate those golden oldies that do get a proper disc release. Even rarer is a silent film on 4K. When that happens, we should really throw a party. I am currently mixing drinks, blowing noisemakers, and throwing confetti over the release of Buster Keaton’s masterpiece, The General, on 4K Blu-ray.

THE PLOT IN BRIEF: Southern train engineer Johnnie Gray (Buster Keaton) wants to join the Confederate cause in the Civil War. His girlfriend Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack) wants him to join up too. Army recruiters want him to remain a train engineer; they think he's more valuable to the South in that capacity. One day a group of Northern spies steal Johnnie’s beloved engine, “The General,” and drive it north. Keaton takes off after it; he too steals a train and the chase begins. Keaton follows them to a Northern army encampment, where he accidentally discovers that the Northern spies have kidnapped Annabelle to boot!

Johnnie not only regains his train, he overhears the North’s plans for battle. Keaton rushes back to the South to warn the Confederate troops, with the Union army chasing him the entire way. It's a perfect comic plot: we go North, we turn around, and we come back to the South. Everything the Northern spies inflict upon Buster on the way there, Buster does to them threefold on the journey back.

There is drive and genius on display in this film. When we see Buster Keaton doing things, he's REALLY doing them. Keaton and his production crew REALLY bought and restored two real Civil War-era (era) trains. Keaton REALLY taught himself to drive a real train. How did they stage the train crash scene? They bought a third real train and REALLY CRASHED THAT TRAIN.

SPOILER ALERT: When they drop the train in the river, that's a real bridge, too, and hundreds of local townspeople showed up to watch them film the scene. Keaton and company spent $42,000 on the most expensive single shot in silent film history—in 2016 dollars, that’s more than $592,000.

Keaton famously told his crew to make it “so authentic, it hurts.” For many people, The General is the Civil War brought to life on screen. The costumes look authentic, the sets look authentic, and as I mentioned earlier, they used a real Civil War locomotive and restored it to working order. The one thing you can always say about Buster Keaton is “The money is on the screen.”

Because I am 1) old and 2) a Buster Keaton junkie, I have QUITE a double-dipping story for my readers. When I was in grammar school, I used to check out 8mm films from my local public library with my widdle libwawy cawd. I consequently became acquainted with the late, lamented Blackhawk Films of Davenport, Iowa and later spent way too much of my allowance buying 8mm silent comedies that I would play on the little projector that Santa had brought me at Christmas. Let’s call that Dip #1.

DIP #2: When I graduated from college, the VHS boom was in full swing, and my local K-Mart offered a series of budget tapes of public-domain films called “Film Classics.” I bought another copy of Keaton’s The General on tape for the princely sum of $9.99.

DIP #3: A few years later, I became aware of a mail-order video store called Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee. They offered tapes of other silent films of questionable legality (like Keaton’s Sherlock Junior) at reasonable prices. (A few years ago, I was visiting my son in LA, and we drove past the actual Eddie Brandt building. Could they still be in business?)

DIP #4: Around about this time, a colleague at my high school thought I had too much money just lying around and introduced me to the wonders of a new format, laserdiscs, and a new company, Image Entertainment, which released most of Keaton’s work in the new, shiny format.

DIP#5: Those original Image Entertainment laserdiscs were quickly replaced by the greatly improved and more comprehensive Kino/Lorber Art of Buster Keaton laserdisc box sets.

DIPS 6 AND 7: Then DVD hit the market. The first thing DVDs did, for those of you who were not yet born, was to kill laserdiscs DEAD DEAD DEAD! (DVDs were much cheaper than laserdiscs.) The Kino/Lorber Buster Keaton DVD boxset became a must-buy. Why two dips? I was stupid enough to lend two discs from that box set to a ne’r-do-well student when he was out for a week. I was hoping he would watch the Keaton films he missed in class at home. I never saw those discs again. Because it made me sad to look at that expensive box set with two of its discs missing (and because I did not want to have to replace the ENTIRE impressive, expensive box set) I found a Japanese knock-off of questionable legality on eBay and bought it, just to replace the two missing discs.

DIP #8: Years passed, and Blu-ray discs were introduced, necessitating the purchase of Kino/Lorber’s 14 Blu-ray boxset Buster Keaton Collection.

DIP #9: A few years later, Kino/Lorber released improved transfers of some of the films in neat, double feature Blu-ray discs.

DIP #10: The rights to all the Keaton films passed from Kino/Lorber to Cohen Media Group in 2013, and CMG released new 4K scans of Keaton’s The General and Steamboat Bill Jr. on Blu-ray disc.

DIP #11: A few weeks ago, I was made aware that Eureka Entertainment was finally going to release The General in 4K as part of their BFI Masters of Cinema series. Guess who excitedly ordered the disc immediately? (Yes, it was me.) The new BFI disc has a nice selection of extras, including a new audio commentary by David Kalat. Previous discs offered several choices of score. I was glad that the new BFI disc features my favorite of all these scores, Carl Davis’s impressive orchestral score.

The new disc is stunning. It has better contrast and more fine detail than any previous version. The video essays included as supplements are informative and well produced. Orson Welles once hosted a public television program where he introduced classic films and his introduction to The General is included here. This new disc is a feast for the Keaton fan.

The best Keaton documentary ever made, Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow, is available on the YouTubes, all 153 minutes of it. It comes highly recommended:

While canoodling about on the Internet doing research for this column, I also discovered that the Peter Bogdanovich documentary, The Great Buster, is now available on Blu-ray disc. I also discovered that the magnificent Kevin Brownlow and David Gill silent film documentary, Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film, is also now available on the YouTube machine. Many years ago on this very website, I was bitching and moaning that after its original VHS and laserdisc releases, this amazing series went OOP for decades. You can access all 13 wonderful episodes here.

It makes me happy that after one hundred years, there is still a market for Buster Keaton films. Two weeks ago, the Aero Theater in Santa Monica screened Keaton’s Sherlock Junior, The Electric House, and The Scarecrow to a packed house. This Saturday, they will be showing The Boat and Steamboat Bill Jr. I just hope Keaton’s films never play the Sphere in Las Vegas, as that would obviously involve the producers of that sad, sappy tourist attraction dropping a train on their customers.

Ouch.