The Theater and Cinema of Buster Keaton (review)

Abstract

It's arguable that Keaton's reputation is fading; arguable, too, that we'd enjoy him more if we could shed expectations we may not be aware of having, as that good cinema is today's big-budget cinema, achieving a realism such as the stage once aspired to: a well-made plot unfolding from beginning to end, its happenings rooted in a real world. One Keaton film that did match such criteria was The General (1927). Unlike his other silent features, it was based on a book, a book moreover with a well-made plot, drawn from something that happened during the Civil War. Northern soldiers commandeer a Southern train and head north, destroying telegraph wires important to the Dixie war effort. Its conductor (Buster) pursues them "initially on foot, then in a handcar, and finally with a locomotive he discover[s] along the way" (87-8). To this Keaton added a second train chase--Northern soldiers chasing Buster back south--also a lady abducted and later rescued along with the train. These symmetries "contribute to scholars' claims for The General's classicism" (88).