The Films of Buster Keaton: Conclusion

Over the past 8 weeks – and 24 posts – I have written well over 25,000 words on the films of Buster Keaton. I’ve covered 42 different films he directed or co-directed (1 short with Fatty Arbuckle, 19 of his own shorts, 12 features, 6 sound shorts for Educational Pictures, 3 shorts for MGM in which he didn’t appear and 1 shot decades later for the National Film Board of Canada) as well as one short he didn’t direct, but I found too interesting not to discuss. That’s a remarkable amount of work for one filmmaker.

It’s the films he made in the 1920s that he’ll always be remembered for. From 1920-1929 he directed 19 shorts and 12 features, and while not all of them are masterpieces, quite a few of them are and many others are close to it. During this time period even his misfires were at least entertaining if nothing else. No director in history has ever made such a remarkable, sustained run in one decade. And that, in an instant, it was gone. He signed the contract with MGM, got to make two features his way, and then nothing else. He spent the last 37 years of his life mostly working on projects that were beneath his genius – but he kept plugging away.

That damned contract has got to be one of the worst things that ever happened in cinema history. Keaton thought that it was getting too expensive to be an Independent Filmmaker – and that by signing the contract, he would be securing his financial future, and that the studio would still allow him some degree of freedom. Why else would they sign Buster Keaton to a contract if they didn’t want him to be Buster Keaton?

Charles Chaplin, to who Keaton will be forever compared, stayed independent – and as a result was able to do some of his very best work after Keaton’s career was over in terms of his producing his own works. Chaplin’s two greatest silent films were City Lights (1931) and Modern Times (1936) – both of which he made long after everyone else had given up making silent films. He made at least two great sound films as well – The Great Dictator (1940) and Monsieur Verdoux (1947) – as well as the very good Limelight (1952) – featuring Keaton. He never had to degrade himself by taking roles unworthy of his talent – he pretty much controlled his entire career, and after he became a star, never had to appear in a film he didn’t direct.

Sadly, that was not the case for Keaton – who lost everything. For 10 years, he was one of the best filmmakers in the world – and he remains the best actor/director ever because of those 10 years. After that, he pretty much had to do whatever was offered to him – whether or not it was any good. That’s no way to treat a genius – and yet Keaton really only has himself to blame. Chaplin – and others – told him not to sign that contract. If only he had listened, we may live in a world where Keaton kept right on making masterpieces for years to come. One of the great tragedies of film culture is that will never really know what Keaton could have done in the years after 1929.

The Films of Buster Keaton: The Railrodder & Film (Both 1965)

The Railrodder (1965)
Directed by: Buster Keaton & Gerald Potterton & John Spotton.
Written by: Buster Keaton & Gerald Potterton.
Starring: Buster Keaton (The Man).

The year before Keaton’s death came The Railrodder – which was the first film since 1951 that he did any – credited or uncredited – directing work on. It is a short film – 25 minutes – and made for the National Film Board of Canada. I think it’s fair to say that Keaton and Canada are the co-stars of the film – as there is at least as much – if not more – of the beautiful Canadian wilderness as there is of Keaton in the film. The film doesn’t really reach the level of genius of Keaton’s best work – nor is it really anything all that different that he had done before. Yet, it’s worth seeing for several reasons – the most important of which is that it’s a fun little film in its own right. But also because it shows that Keaton, even at the age of 70, still had it. It’s yet another little film, that while not great, makes you realize that Keaton could have still been making great films right up until the end.

In the film, Keaton starts out in England, reading a newspaper when he sees an ad touting the majesty of Canada and encouraging people to take a tour. Keaton thinks is a grand idea, and immediately jumps into the water. We next see him walking out of the ocean at the other side – apparently walking underwater from England to Canada. The bulk of the film has Keaton on a railway speeder – by himself – going from one end of Canada to the other.

Ironically, although there are many beautiful shots of Canada throughout the movie – as Keaton passes through the Rocky Mountains and other beautiful landscapes – he doesn’t seem to much notice what’s going on around him. He sits on his speeder reading the paper, or trying to get some sleep as the beauty moves all around him. He ends up on the other end of Canada – another Ocean – and he finally gets off his speeder and marvels at the beautiful view. Then, of course, someone else takes his speeder – and Keaton starts the long, lonely trek back across the country.

No one is going to mistake The Railrodder as one of Keaton’s masterpieces. It is an amusing film from start to finish – with Keaton doing some classic sight gags, as well as renewing his love of trains – that we saw so often in his 1920s films.

Yet I also think The Railrodder deserves to be more than just a footnote on Keaton’s career – as many seem to see it. It is the last film he directed (although, officially, he didn’t receive credit) – and it is certainly in line with his best films in that it sees the world in the same way, and touches upon some of his passions. It’s also the last time we get to see Keaton in full silent comedy star mode – and we should all be greatful for a film that shows that even in the last year of his life, Keaton was able to do some great physical comedy. So no, The Railrodder is not a masterpiece – but it’s a damn fine film – and a must for Keaton buffs.

Film (1965)

Directed by: Alan Schneider.   
Written by: Samuel Beckett.
Starring: Buster Keaton (The Man).

1965’s Film – a 17 minute short film written by Samuel Becket (and who the credited director, Alan Schneider says was really the director as well) is the only film as part of this series that Buster Keaton didn’t have a hand in directing. It’s such an interesting film though, that I had to include it – if for no other reason than to have as an excuse to write about it. The film is one of the last of Keaton’s career – and it shows what a gifted physical performer he was right until the end of his life. Making his performance all the more remarkable is that until the closing minutes of the film we never see Keaton’s face. The camera remains behind him – leading some to call the film an extended chase sequence with the camera following Keaton. This is true for the first part of the movie – with Keaton edging along the street, looking nervously around, and trying to escape from whoever or whatever is following him. The camera seems to be an entity unto itself – and when it catches other – and there are three other actors in the film briefly in the opening shots – in its gaze, they are stricken with a horrible look on their face. What have they seen – or what is being done to them.

The bulk of the film however takes place in a small, rundown apartment. Keaton enters, and locks the door – still trying to keep whatever is following him out, but he’s unsuccessful. There is a dog and a cat in the room – and he tries – comically – to get them both out the door, but as soon as he gets one out, the other runs back in. There’s a picture on a wall – a drawing of a man with huge eyes – that Keaton rips up. He holds an envelope – one of those that close by wrapping string around two circles that look like eyes in the film. He’s paranoid – he doesn’t want anyone or anything looking at him. But why?

The film is a strange one, and not altogether successful. While there has been a lot of complicated critical theory written about the film – some of it quite pretentious, but then the film itself is at least somewhat pretentious – I think Keaton himself summed the movie up best saying "a man may keep away from everybody but he can't get away from himself." That is the film in a nutshell – Keaton plays a man who is trying to shut everything out, but in the end he cannot. He spends time in a rocking chair, eventually opening that envelope, to see pictures of himself at various stages of his life – eventually ripping them up. He is a man alone, trying to destroy everything about himself. But he cannot ultimately hide.

Does the movie work? Kind of. Keaton is brilliant in the film in his final silent film performance. He was old and dying, and the yet he still moves undeniably like Keaton. He holds the screen, even while his back is turned to it for almost the entire running time. By the time we finally see his face, it’s somewhat shocking. This is the Keaton we know but older, more beat up and weathered – more melancholy than we’ve ever seen him before.

The camera work is quite good. In Becket’s original screenplay he identifies the two characters as E – for Eye (the camera) and O – for Object – Keaton. The camera is in almost constant motion, moving along behind Keaton, keeping his distance, as if it’s trying to hide – not wanting Keaton to see that he is being observed.

The idea behind the movie is good, but I do wonder about the execution. Becket – who never wrote a film before or after this one – called the film an “interesting failure”. I wonder if he had continued to write for film if he would have come up with something better – perhaps a little more subtle, a little less ponderous.

The film works because of Keaton and the camerawork, and it is certainly an interesting, and somewhat ambitious film. I won’t argue with Andrew Sarris who called the title “the most pretentious in film history” – but I think there’s a lot of value in the film. It isn’t a masterpiece, and perhaps it is little more than the interesting failure that Becket described it as. But damn if it isn’t interesting.

The Films of Buster Keaton: Post 1938 Career

Buster Keaton’s directing career pretty much came to a close after those three shorts for MGM in 1938.  Over the rest of his career, he would only get a few uncredited directing jobs – on forgotten films  like Hollywood Cavalcade (1939), Easy to Wed (1946), In the Good Old Summertime (1949)  and Excuse My Dust (1951). I couldn’t find anything about what he actually did on those movies – with the exception of In the Good Old Summertime – where he devised a pratfall that would result in a broken violin – and was able to perform the scene himself (appearing in an MGM film for the first time since being fired in 1933) – and also working on a few other sequences in the film. I assume those other directing credits were something similar – filmmakers needing a gag to work, and getting Keaton to step in and direct a scene to make it work.

His acting career wasn’t much better. He’d appear in 11 shorts for Columbia Pictures between 1939 and 1941 – before swearing those off entirely. They are even less well known than his work for Educational Pictures, mainly because he had even less control over them. Between the end of his time working with Educational Pictures in 1936 and his death 30 years later, he had some 65 screen credits – often in small roles in small films. TV gave him a second career – he had not one, but two different TV shows in the early days of the medium – The Buster Keaton Show and Life with Buster Keaton – but neither lasted long. He did quite a lot of work on other TV shows – either as a guest star or back when they used to air what were essentially filmed plays. Most of this work is long forgotten. For children of the 1960s, they recognize Keaton as the old guy who showed up in Beach Party movies like Beach Blanket Bingo and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini. Throughout most of this time, it was thought that much of Keaton’s work in the 1920s – especially the shorts – were lost, although they were re-discovered in the 1960s, and he finally got his due as the genius that he was.

His most memorable film roles during this span of his career are inarguably his cameo as himself in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd. (1950) – playing one of Gloria Swanson’s card playing friends – the forgotten silent screen stars and in Charlie Chaplin’s Limelight (1952) – where he played Chaplin’s onstage assistant – and apparently was so good that Chaplin feared he’d upstage him, so he drastically cut his part (what’s in the final film is genius by Keaton).

In 1965 though, he made two shorts – one for the National Film Board of Canada (for which he did some uncredited directing – the last of his career) and one a collaboration with the famed writer Samuel Becket – who initially wanted Chaplin for the film, but he couldn’t be tracked down. Becket, who had tried to cast Keaton in the original Broadway production of Waiting for Godot (but Keaton turned him down) later said Keaton was the right choice for the film – and he was. Tomorrow’s post will be about these two odd films for 1965 – The Railrodder and Film.

The Films of Buster Keaton: 1938 MGM Shorts

After his stint with Educational Pictures, Keaton returned to MGM – not as a director or an actor, but as a gag writer for other comedians – at a much reduced salary from his heyday. In 1938, MGM did give him the chance to direct three, 10 minutes movies – all of which have been forgotten, and if I’m being honest should remain that way. It’s somewhat sad to see a man of Keaton’s genius stuck directing this dreck. At least he didn’t star in them.

Life in Sometown, U.S.A. (1938)

Directed by: Buster Keaton.
Written by: Carl Dudley and Richard Murphy.
Featuring: Carey Wilson, William Bailey, Margaret Bert, Marie Blake, Betty Blythe, Chester Clute, Grace Goodall, Sheldon Jett, Cy Kendall, Edward LeSaint, Howard M. Mitchell, Lee Phelps, Josephine Whittell. 

The first of three 10 minute quickies he made for MGM in 1938 – Life in Sometown USA is probably the best of the three – although that’s not saying much. It is a pseudo-documentary about a small town where a rich woman is angry that the police chief won’t enforce the laws she wants. A young boy playing baseball has broken her window – and the judge orders him to pay the woman back. But he has no money, so the chief sneaks it to him – only to be found out. The woman and her friends decide to get together a petition to get rid of the chief in order to get someone else in who will enforce the laws. So the chief conspires with the woman’s browbeaten husband to do exactly what his wife wants – and enforce all the laws on the books – even those that are antiquated – like the punishment for a woman who talks back to her husband in public.

I’m not quite sure what the point of this film is. It seems at first like it’s nothing more than a mildly amusing little short – a 1930s version of those internet posts about “crazy laws” in different parts of the world that keep popping up. But the film gets surprisingly preachy by the end – almost as if it was funded by Libertarians, complaining about all the laws that Americans are subjected to. The last line in the short advocates going back to few laws starting with the First Commandment (Thou shalt have no other gods before me).

You can tell Keaton’s heart really isn’t into this movie – it’s lazily assembled and acted. The first few minutes are at best mildly amusing. Then the film gets kind of strange – requiring people to carry guns to church, and the aforementioned law against wives talking back to their husbands, which takes a strangely ugly turn. If Keaton’s name wasn’t attached, this would probably be in the junkbin of history by now – it’s practically there already with his name attached – and to be honest, that’s where it belongs.

Hollywood Handicap (1938)

Directed by: Buster Keaton.   
Featuring: The Original Sing Band, Charles Ruggles, Mickey Rooney, Stuart Erwin, June Collyer, Charles Butterworth, Al Jolson, Ruby Keeler, Edgar Bergen, Dorothy Lamour, Bing Crosby, Robert Montgomery,
Edmund Lowe, Billy 'Red' Jones, Warner Baxter, Oliver Hardy.

Streamlined Swing (1938)

Directed by: Buster Keaton.   
Written by: John W. Krafft & Marion Mack.
Featuring: The Original Sing Band, Richard Cramer, Lester Dorr, Walter Soderling.

The other two 10 minute shorts that Keaton directed for MGM in 1938 both feature The Original Sing Band – an African American singing group, who use limited instruments, but who make all sorts of strange sounds with their mouths. They really do appear to be talented. Unfortunately the two shorts they are in for Keaton this year saddle them with playing rather ugly stereotypes – they are very smart, but they “sho’ is happy”.

In the first, The Original Sing Band is gifted a race horse at the track – and they hope it will win. But, he of course he loses – but things turn out because he’s a talented horse actor. This is a star studded short – with all sorts of stars making cameo appearances (they basically wave at the camera). In the second, the group is given a Private train car, and somehow get it off the tracks and set it up as a restaurant. Unfortunately the person who gave it to them was a mental patient – and it wasn’t his to give. They seem to be in trouble – but a rich man loves their home cooking – and wants to buy the car for them. Unfortunately, The Original Sing Band is too dumb to know what he if offering them.

The highlights (and I use the term loosely) of the two films is watching The Original Sing Band perform – they really are quite good. But I had trouble enjoying either film that much. I have not exactly defended some of Keaton’s racial humor (some would say racist) in his other films – from his use of blackface, red face and stereotypes – because in Keaton’s film, it never seemed to be used to mock the characters, and was rather gentle when compared to much of what was being done at the time. Here, again, I don’t think there’s any real malicious intent. However, seeing a group of talented musicians reduced to playing this sort of offensive stereotype certainly left a bad taste in my mouth. It’s beneath both them and Keaton to have them behave this way.

Keaton clearly made these films because he pretty much had to – he was under contract and you did what they told you to. I suppose we can be glad these two shorts didn’t prove to be more popular (they only made these two according to IMDB) – and Keaton The Original Sing Band didn’t have to keep degrading themselves. Still, these two certainly represent the nadir of Keaton’s directing career.

The Films of Buster Keaton: Educational Shorts Part II

Blue Blazes (1936)
Directed by: Buster Keaton & Raymond Kane.
Written by: David Freedman.
Starring: Buster Keaton (Elmer Whipple), Arthur L. Jarrett (Fire Chief), Marlyn Stuart (Fire Chief's Blonde Daughter), Rose Kessner (Fire Chief's Wife), Patty Wilson (Fire Chief's Brunette Daughter).

Much like Grand Slam Opera, Blue Blazes feels like Keaton simply going through the motions. In it, he plays a firefighter, who gets transferred to a small town department because every time there’s a fire, he has trouble staying aboard the truck – as he comically falls off, and heads spinning down the street. He is given one chance to redeem himself, and pretty much screws that up as well. He’s going to be kicked off the force. And then, of course, he becomes a hero – when the Fire Chief’s two wayward daughters set fire to their house in order to get the firefighters there so they can sneak out for their dates that their parents have forbidden them to go on. Keaton saves the pair of them (who were never really in danger), and then the chief’s wife – twice! – who was.

The rescue sequence at the end is the best part of Blue Blazes. In it, Keaton uses a strange, very wide ladder – it’s almost a staircase – and it reminded me of a similar sequence in his short The Haunted House. And in that lays the biggest problem with Blue Blazes – it feels like Keaton simply repeating what he did in the past, with lesser results. Blue Blazes is not a horrible movie – although pretty much every scene when anyone talks in the film is pretty dreadful – but it is simply warmed over Keaton.

Mixed Magic (1936)

Directed by: Buster Keaton & Raymond Kane.
Starring: Buster Keaton (Elmer 'Happy' Butterworth), Eddie Lambert (Professor Spumoni), Marlyn Stuart (Mary), Eddie Hall (Hector).

Like most of the other Keaton shorts for Educational Pictures, Mixed Magic feels like the genius simply going through the motions. It stars Keaton as a bumbling fool trying hard to impress a young woman, and keep his job as a magician’s assistant – despite the fact that he continually screws up the man’s act – in part because he’s a bumbling fool, and in part because he is being sabotaged by the man whose job he took. If Blue Blazes recalls The Haunted House at times, with its use of the staircase/ladder, than Mixed Magic recalls another Keaton short for the 1920s – The Electric House – where Keaton gets a job he’s unqualified for, and is sabotaged by someone who is. The resulting short feels like Keaton simply trying to repeat his past success, without getting any real results.

Most of the other shorts he made for Educational Pictures had at least one standout sequence – the fight at the end of The Gold Ghost, Keaton the trapeze artist at the end of Allez Oop, the rescue sequence in Blue Blazes – but that’s lacking in Mixed Magic. The extended gag is supposed to be Keaton assisting Professor Spumoni and his magic show – and while they are a few isolated laughs, they never really add up to much – never really achieve a proper comic velocity.

As a result, Mixed Magic is weak even by the standards of Keaton’s already weaker shorts for this period. An entirely forgettable short that is never really all that funny, but is never really quite bad either. It’s just kind of there.

Love Nest on Wheels (1937)

Directed by: Buster Keaton & Charles Lamont.
Written by: Paul Girard Smith & William Hazlett Upson.
Starring: Buster Keaton (Elmer), Myra Keaton (Elmer's Ma), Al St. John (Uncle Jed), Lynton Brent (The Bridegroom), Diana Lewis (The Bride), Bud Jamison (The Mortgage Holder), Louise Keaton (Elmer's Sis), Harry Keaton (Elmer's Brother), Payne B. Johnson (Boy).

For his last two reeler for Educational Pictures, Keaton made one of his better shorts from the period. He plays a somewhat different character – not that different, but a little – and the short is more of an ensemble piece, with Keaton as its center, than a showcase for him alone. It’s an enjoyable little short – with Keaton and his family trying to get the mortgage payment together to keep their failing hotel going by selling off a trailer. The only problem is that a cow is currently living in the trailer – and its gained weight since moving in, so it cannot get back out again.

Keaton is Elmer, and when we first see him, he’s lazing on the porch alongside the rest of his family. They don’t have much in the way of ambition or anything to go. They are a family of rednecks – and Keaton even effects a little bit of a redneck accent in his speaking voice this time. They’re doomed – the mortgage on the hotel is due, and they have no money. Even when people arrive, they don’t want to stay there – the place is basically a pig sty. But if Keaton can clean up that trailer that was left when someone died, he may be able to save the hotel – for now.

The film is basically all manic energy as the family tries to please their few guests, and get rid of that pesky cow. As far as Keaton’s shorts go, it’s nothing all that special – but it’s a step up from most of the films he made for Educational Pictures. It’s at least amusing from start to finish – and doesn’t solely rely on Keaton for its comic energy.

Keaton made 16 shorts with Educational Pictures over the span of 3 years – and they are more or less forgotten now. Looking back at them, it’s easy to see why. None of them approach the level the genius of Keaton’s work in the 1920s – even the best of these sounds two reelers pale in comparison to the worst of Keaton’s silent shorts. They aren’t painful by any means – but there really is little reason to watch any of them. At their best – The Gold Ghost, Allez Oop and Love Nest on Wheels – they are entertaining time wasters. At their worst, they’re just time wasters.

The Films of Buster Keaton - Educational Shorts Part I

It’s strange to me every time I see a non-silent Buster Keaton film – especially when I hear his voice. During The Dissolve’s discussion of Sherlock Jr., one of their critics compared his voice to that of Eeyore – the beloved, almost suicidally depressed donkey friend of Winnie the Pooh – and it’s not a wrong comparison. There has always been a touch of melancholy to Keaton’s work – but it’s more pronounced when you hear him speak.

After he signed that damnable contract with MGM, he only got to make two features the way he wanted (at least in part) – The Cameraman and Spite Marriage – and then no longer had any creative control of his movies. They teamed him with Jimmy Durante and others – and although the myth says Keaton’s career was over after the talkies came in – that’s not really accurate. His sound features made quite a bit of money. But Keaton was miserable, and didn’t really hide that fact. Added to it, his alcoholism worsened, and he was considered undependable – and eventually was fired from MGM. Not long after, he signed with Educational Pictures (which, ironically enough, didn’t really make Educational Pictures) and between 1934 and 1937 made 16 talkie two reelers – six of which, according to IMDB, he co-directed (although didn’t receive onscreen credit). Rather than review all 16 of these, I choose the six IMDB lists as the ones he co-directed. At best, they are an amusing distraction, at worst downright dull. Keaton was trying to redo some of things that made him famous in the 1920s – and the results were mixed. After those 16 shorts, he directed three even shorter (around 10 minutes) films in 1938 – and then pretty much his directing career was over. The next few posts will review the 6 Educational Pictures shorts he apparently co-directed, his 3 1938 shorts and finally two films he made in the 1960s – The Railrodder for the National Film Board of Canada (which, again, he apparently co-directed, with no credit) and Film – his collaboration with famed writer Samuel Becket (and director Alan Schneider) – which he did not direct at all, and according to some reports, didn’t even understand (not that I blame him). It really doesn’t belong, since I was only reviewing the film he had a hand in directing – but it’s so interesting, I’m going to anyway.

The Gold Ghost (1934)

Directed by: Buster Keaton & Charles Lamont.
Written by: Ewart Adamson & Nicholas T. Barrows & Charles Lamont & Ernest Pagano.
Starring: Buster Keaton (Wally), Warren Hymer (Bugs Kelly), Dorothy Dix (Gloria).

The Gold Ghost is a familiar plot for Keaton – he plays the son of a rich man, who sets out to prove he is a real man – sort of. What he actually does is overhear the girl he likes, Gloria (Dorothy Dix) dismiss him as a loser that she doesn’t want to marry, even though both her father and his think the joining of the two families would be good. So Keaton’s Wally, instead of fighting to prove his worth, runs away. He ends up in an abandoned mining town – full of cobwebs and rickety buildings, and appoints himself Sheriff. Then a wanted criminal shows up – although Keaton doesn’t know that. And then two miners find gold nearby, setting off another gold rush in the era. Soon the town is packed, and everyone looks to Keaton, who they think is the rightful Sheriff. – even Gloria and her father, who have come to see about their nearby mine. But there are claim jumpers, and Keaton must fight them off.

The Gold Ghost is perhaps my favorite of these Educational Pictures Shorts – and it’s still just passable. The best moments are when Keaton goes an extended period of time without talking – doing some of his patented bits of physical comedy. He didn’t have the ambition (or perhaps the funds) to do anything large scale, but he can still be funny playing around by himself, acting like a tough guy, or getting into a comical fight that ends the movie – and has multiple people getting hit in the head by mallets.

The movie meanders a little bit, but not unpleasantly. Keaton is fine in the film, but never really anything more. At 20 minutes, it doesn’t overstay its welcome, and for the most part it is amusing. It’s not a great short by any means – but it’s amusing, and that’s about all it had the ambition for.

Allez Oop (1934)

Directed by: Buster Keaton & Charles Lamont.
Written by: Ewart Adamson & Ernest Pagano.
Starring: Buster Keaton (Elmer), Dorothy Sebastian (Paula Stevens), George J. Lewis (The Great Apollo).

If The Gold Ghost is not the best of these shorts, that Allez Oop is. In the film, Keaton stars as Elmer – a lowly watch repairman, who meets Paula (Dorothy Sebastian – reteaming with Keaton after 1929’s Spite Marriage). He takes an immediate liking to her, and conspires a way to see her again. The feeling seems to be mutual, as she does the same thing. The pair end up at the circus together, where she falls for The Great Apollo – a trapeze artist. Keaton tries desperately to perform the same tricks, and fails miserably. That is until a fire breaks out in Dorothy’s apartment, The Great Apollo leaves her there to die, and Keaton quite literally swings into action.

In these shorts, there isn’t a lot of large scale action sequences that Keaton was known for throughout his career. The biggest of them is probably the climax of this film, as Keaton has to swing from building to building in his attempt to rescue Sebastian. It shows, if nothing else, that despite all that had happened, if given the opportunity, Keaton could still perform stunts with the best of them. That fact is almost sad, as we know Keaton didn’t really have many opportunities to ply his trade – it’s just further proof that we probably missed out on something special by Keaton not being able to direct more after the 1920s.

The film isn’t great – Keaton repeats too many gags that drag on too long, and the love story between him and Sebastian just never really seems real. But like the best of these shorts – which are still only passable – it is an entertaining little distraction. Not vintage Keaton, but not bad.

Grand Slam Opera (1936)

Directed by: Buster Keaton & Charles Lamont.
Written by: Buster Keaton & Charles Lamont.
Starring: Buster Keaton (Elmer Butts), Diana Lewis (The Girl Downstairs), Harold Goodwin (Band Leader), John Ince (Col. Crowe).

Grand Slam Opera is perhaps the dullest of all the Keaton shorts that he had a hand in directing for Educational Pictures. It starts interestingly enough – with Keaton leaving his home town by train – and being given a singing send-off – Keaton even sings a few bars. And then he gets to the big city to compete in a radio contest, and the film never really finds its footing. Essentially, Keaton shows up at an amateur talent contest for the radio – doesn’t get to perform – and spends the next few minutes practicing his various routines, and annoying (and possibly stalking) a pretty girl who lives downstairs from him. He then heads back the next week to the radio program – and gets to perform. The only problem is that his is a juggling act – and this is radio. His act goes to hell pretty quickly, and spends the vast majority of his time fighting with the band leader. This sequence has its funny moments, but drags on too long. The final twist at the end – that Keaton in fact won the contest even though he was thrown out of the building makes no sense at all. His fight with the band leader was funny (mildly) to the movie audience, but is essentially silent – so why the hell did the radio audience love it so much?

I have to wonder if at this point, Keaton was merely coasting. The first two films he had a hand in directing for Educational Pictures was near the beginning of his time there – in 1934. Perhaps he thought that he could get his career back on track – as while neither film is great, they are both funny, and show a little bit of daring. This film, directed in 1936, feels like him going through the motions – as if he knew nothing was going to become of them, and he was simply doing it for the money.

There are moments that work – and I would have loved to see Keaton follow through on the setup – and making a mini-musical. But for the most part Grand Slam Opera is a very forgettable 20 minute short from a man capable of much better.

The Films of Buster Keaton: Features Ranked

Previously, I ranked the 19 shorts that Keaton made between 1920-1923, so I figured I had to rank his 12 features that he made from 1923-1929. To me, they are pretty easy to split into three categories – the top 4 being absolute masterpieces – among the best comedies ever made, the next four are also great, would be triumphs for most lesser directors, but are a notch below Keaton’s very best, and the bottom four are interesting, fun, lightweight entertainments – enjoyable to be sure, but would probably have been forgotten if not for the fact they were directed by a genius.

This will be my last ranking for this series – I have 11 shorts left to see, but they aren’t as easily broken down like his 1920-23 shorts, or his features, so I don’t see much point in ranking them. Enough of that – here is how I would rank Keaton’s films.

12. Battling Butler (1926) – Keaton’s most plot heavy film – and it suffers because of it, as the plot is both inane and needlessly complex, and eats up too much screen time explaining. Great fight sequence at the end, and amusing bits throughout; make it interesting, but not altogether satisfying.

11. College (1927) – A box office disappointment at the time, and one that hasn’t really gone through any serious critical re-evaluation – it’s amusing to see Keaton attempt, and fail, at different sports but it never really comes together.

10. Three Ages (1923) – Keaton’s first feature, where he hedged his bets and essentially made three connected shorts. They work better as a whole than they would have individually – but still suffers a little for being disjointed.

9. Go West (1925) – This one has grown on me a little since I first saw it as part of this series – still one of his weaker efforts, but I loved the love story between Keaton and Brown Eyes.

8. Spite Marriage (1929) – His final feature – which I think is somewhat underrated – hilarious at times, even if it never quite matches his best.

7. The Navigator (1924) – The best moments are as good as anything he has ever done, and the love story is more developed than most, but some of the sequences drag a little bit – especially the finale, which is usually where he wows us.

6. Seven Chances (1925) – The first forty minutes are quite amusing, as Keaton tries everything to find a wife. The last 20 minutes are downright genius, as it’s an extended chase sequence that he handles brilliantly.

5. Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928) – Slightly more emotionally complex than many of Keaton’s films – and an amazing cyclone finale make this one of Keaton’s best films.

4. The Cameraman (1928) – The love story is wonderful, the dual action climaxes are great, and even if lacks some of the more anarchy of many of Keaton’s films – as MGM made him use a script! – and it’s still brilliant.

3. Our Hospitality (1923) – Keaton’s second film, and first masterpiece, is one of his best narratives – and also one of the most beautiful films of his career. It’s also hilarious.

2. The General (1927) – Undoubtedly Keaton’s most famous, and logistically complex, film – and it’s as great as you’ve heard it is. A masterpiece.

1. Sherlock Jr. (1924) – Always has been, and always will be, my favorite Keaton – technically brilliant, and an expert examination of our relationship to the movies. A true masterpiece – worthy of my adding it to my list of the 10 greatest films of all time.

The Films of Buster Keaton: Spite Marriage (1929)

Spite Marriage (1929)
Directed by: Buster Keaton & Edward Sedgwick.
Written by: Lew Lipton & Ernest Pagano & Richard Schayer & Robert E. Hopkins.
Starring: Buster Keaton (Elmer), Dorothy Sebastian (Trilby Drew), Edward Earle (Lionel Benmore), Leila Hyams (Ethyl Norcrosse), William Bechtel (Nussbaum), Jack Byron (Scarzi).

The conventional wisdom holds that after signing with MGM, Keaton made one last great film in The Cameraman, and then his career as a great director was essentially over – as he never really got to make another great film. That is partly true, as the only other feature Keaton directed for MGM was Spite Marriage in 1929 – which isn’t really regarded as one of Keaton’s masterpieces. It isn’t as good as Keaton’s best work to be sure – but it’s still a damn good movie – far better than some of his previous features, and hilarious in many respects. Keaton had wanted to make this his first “talkie” – but MGM only had one stage setup for sound, and it was occupied, so Keaton had to make a final silent film. He does utilize sound effects in the film, but no dialogue. The result is a very good little film – the last truly must-see film of Keaton’s directing career.

In the film, Keaton stars as Elmer, a dry cleaner, who is in love with Trilby Drew (Dorothy Sebastian) – a Broadway star. He comes to see her every performance in a new Civil War play, sitting down front, in a tuxedo he “borrows” from his dry cleaning business. Trilby doesn’t think much of her admirer – although she does think he’s a millionaire. She’s in love with her co-star Lionel (Edward Earle) – but when he announces his engagement to a pretty young woman, Trilby is furious – and asks Elmer to marry her. He gladly accepts – but when the truth of who he is becomes clear, she is angry. Her agent tells her it could ruin her career. But none of that can stop Elmer, who tries desperately to get her to love him.

The plot is rather thin and serviceable – as many Keaton plots are – and is really just an excuse to string together some hilarious sequences. The best, and most famous, has Keaton trying to put Sebastian to bed as she has passed out drunk. It is a virtuoso physical comedy sequence, requiring a lot from both Keaton and Sebastian – and it remains one of Keaton’s most well-known comedy (he would later perform it onstage with his then wife). There are other great moments though – an extended sequence where Keaton becomes an extra in Trilby’s melodramatic play, that he turns into an unintentionally hilarious slapstick play with his constant screw-ups (which is kind of a throw back to his screwing up Hamlet in his short, Daydreams). The thrilling climax is classic Keaton – as he finds himself on board a boat with both Sebastian and Earle – now reunited – and having to protect the woman he loves with her cowardly man leaves her there when they are attacked by rumrunners.

Spite Marriage is not one of Keaton’s best known films – and truth be told, it’s not one of his very best. But it is a very good one, and shows Keaton still trying different things – like the incorporation of sound into his silent features. It’s a very good movie, with a strange love story at its center. The film was a box office hit in 1929, so it also showed that right up until MGM took away Keaton’s freedom to make the films he wanted to make, he was still on the top of his game. It’s a shame we didn’t get to see anything else from him.

The Films of Buster Keaton: The Cameraman (1928)

The Cameraman (1928)
Directed by: Buster Keaton & Edward Sedgwick.
Written by: Clyde Bruckman & Lew Lipton & Richard Schayer & Joseph Farnham & Al Boasberg & Byron Morgan.
Starring: Buster Keaton (Buster), Marceline Day (Sally), Harold Goodwin (Stagg), Sidney Bracey (Éditor), Harry Gribbon (Cop), Edward Brophy (Man in Bath-House).

The Cameraman was the first film Keaton made after signing that dreaded contract with MGM – the one he would later call the worst decision of his career. It’s also the only one he made for MGM in which he retained creative control – and even that was pretty much by default. MGM didn’t want Keaton directing anymore – just acting – and they made him work with a script in all but two sequences, where often Keaton would improvise his gags on set. The studio hired Edward Sedgwick to direct The Cameraman, but it became apparent quickly that he couldn’t get what was needed – and Keaton took over from there. The Cameraman is often seen as Keaton’s last stand – his last great movie – and even if I think his follow-up (and only other feature he directed, at least partly for MGM), Spite Marriage is underrated; it is hard to argue with that. The Cameraman is a great movie – even if you can tell while you’re watching it that something is just slightly different than Keaton’s other films. It’s just a little neater and tidier than his others – a little more polished, with a little more emphasis on the romantic subplot. You wonder if Keaton spends the last act of the film with a monkey because studio execs thought people like monkeys (they’re right by the way). Somehow though, Keaton makes it all work. The Cameraman is simply a joy to behold.

Keaton stars, as he often did, playing a guy just trying to make an honest buck – taking Tintypes for 10 cents a pop on the streets of New York. It’s while doing this that he meets Sally (Marceline Day) – and immediately falls for her. She works in the MGM Newsreel office – and he wants to impress her, so he decides to become a newsreel cameraman instead. He buys a cheap camera, and heads out into the streets to try and take footage of anything – and of course screws up. But Sally is sympathetic to him – he’s sweet, he’s rather lovable, so she agrees to go out “walking” with him one day. The movie climaxes with not one but two action sequences – the first where Keaton (now with a monkey assistant – don’t ask) films a gang war in Chinatown, and the next at the yacht club during a race, where Keaton makes a daring rescue.

The plot, as it always is in a Keaton film, is rather simple. That’s not why we watch a Keaton movie anyway – we watch it for the gags – and The Cameraman is filled with wonderful comic set pieces. One of the only two segments where Keaton was allowed to improvise has him head to Yankee stadium – where he finds himself alone on the field, and pantomimes first him pitching and field, and finally stepping up to the plate and hitting an inside the park homerun. Keaton was a big baseball fan, and the entire sequence is wonderfully performed and shot – I loved him running the bases in a single take, with the slight move of the camera. The date sequence provides lots of opportunity for Keaton to embarrass himself in front of Sally, and still try to maintain his dignity. The best moment has him and a rather large man (Edward Brophy) both inside a narrow changing room trying to get ready to go swimming – which of course ends with them switching swimsuits.

The highlights are, of course, at the climax – especially the extended gang war, in which Keaton doesn’t just film, but at times becomes an active participant – I loved the way he hands a knife back to a fighting gang member so he can keep filming – subtly manipulating the news for a greater story. It is one of the most elaborately staged set pieces in all of Keaton’s work – and he pulls it off wonderfully. The speedboat sequence at the end is not quite as thrilling – but it comes close. It also ends with what may just be the most heartbreaking and sentimental shot in all of Keaton’s work – with him alone at the beach.

A couple of things stood out to me as different about The Cameraman than much of Keaton’s work. Often, even in his best movies, the “girl” he’s after is treated as little more than an afterthought – someone Keaton has to impress in order to win over. There are some exceptions – Kathryn McGuire in Sherlock Jr. proves herself a more capable detective than Keaton, and McGuire (again) in The Navigator is given a more fully rounded character to play – as unlike the rest of the women in Keaton’s movies, we see her slowly fall in love with love with him, rather than that love being treated as a given. I’m not sure Marceline Day is quite given that much to do in The Cameraman – but it’s certainly a little more complex than most of the roles for women in Keaton’s films – or at least has more screen time. Other than Keaton falling in love with a cow in Go West, it’s also the most sentimental of the love stories in Keaton’s films. It doesn’t approach Chaplin levels of sentimentality, but it’s as close as Keaton would come in his career. The other thing is the monkey. In movies today, adding a monkey is usually a desperate attempt to increase the humor in a lame comedy – and I doubt things were much different in 1928. The difference here is that Keaton makes the monkey work. This is one of the greatest monkey performances in the history of the movies – especially the scene where the monkey regains consciousness (Keaton thinks he has killed the poor animal) – where the monkey holds his head in a way that make me believe he really was coming to after blacking out. The rest of the movie, the monkey provides even more frantic energy during the gang war sequence. In short, the monkey is brilliant in the movie. When you add in the performance of Brown Eyes in Go West, and that dog in the short The Scarecrow, it really makes you see that Keaton was a genius at directing animals.

The film does have a more polished sheen than most of Keaton’s work – which had a more chaotic spirit. This undoubtedly was because the studio made Keaton work from a script. The studio even insisted that the last shot in the movie contained Keaton smiling (the horror!) until test audiences hated it so much, they allowed him to use a more typical Stone Faced Keaton shot. The studio interference helped in some ways though – by making him use a script, The Cameraman becomes one of Keaton’s more focused efforts, and doesn’t suffer like some of his films from drifting from one set piece to the next with no plan. MGM loved the film so much that according to the trivia section on IMDB, they say they made their directors watch it for years after to see a perfectly constructed comedy.

The Cameraman is pretty much perfectly constructed – and should have been the template MGM used for years to come with Keaton – make him do things a little bit more by the book than he was used to, but basically let him do what he wanted. Sadly, they didn’t do that, and it wasn’t long before they shoehorned him into some talkies – that while popular and profitable, made Keaton miserable, which contributed to his alcoholism, and his contract being terminated in the early 1930s. The Cameraman in many ways was the last hurrah for Keaton. But it was a great one.

The Films of Buster Keaton: Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928)

Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928)
Directed by: Buster Keaton & Charles Reisner. 
Written by: Carl Harbaugh.
Starring: Buster Keaton (William Canfield Jr.), Ernest Torrence (William 'Steamboat Bill' Canfield), Tom McGuire (J.J. King), Tom Lewis (Tom Carter - First and Last Mate), Marion Byron (Kitty King - King's Daughter).

It was the Movie of the Week discussion on The Dissolve of my favorite Keaton film, Sherlock Jr., which made me decide to go through the silent master’s films one at a time. One of things that was mentioned in that discussion was what several people thought was a distinct influence on the films of Wes Anderson in Keaton’s work. It was a connection I had not quite made before – but watching all of Keaton’s films just a few months after I did the same with Anderson’s films, the influence in apparent – from the precise framing both use – often with the most important information at the dead center of the frame – to some of the style and props used (the book How to Be a Detective that Keaton reads in Sherlock Jr. – and several others he reads through his films would fit right in on a bookshelf in the Tenenbaum house). Watching Steamboat Bill Jr., the influence was even more apparent. The storyline involves an son, who is perceived as weak-willed and effete by the father he doesn’t even know, and he sets about trying to prove himself to his old man. When Keaton arrives in the movie, sporting a strange mustache and a beret, he looks strangely like Jason Schwartzman in Rushmore (or really, Schwartzman in any of Anderson’s films). There are even a few special effects shot during Steamboat Bill Jr.’s excellent cyclone finale that made me think of the deliberately old school special effects in the ski racing sequence in Anderson’s latest The Grand Budapest Hotel. More than ever, Steamboat Bill Jr. shows the influence one master has had on another.

In many of Keaton’s movies, he has to prove himself to the woman he is in love with – or else her father who doesn’t see Keaton as a suitable match for his daughter. In Steamboat Bill Jr., he pretty much already has the heart of the girl he loves – Kitty King (Marion Byron) the second they see each other in the barber shop. They knew each other back in Boston, and both have travelled down South to visit their fathers. Bill (Keaton) has travelled to see the father he hasn’t seen since he was a baby – a rough Steamboat captain (Ernest Torrence) who runs an older, somewhat dilapidated steamship the Stonewall Jackson. Kitty is in town to see her dad – J.J. King (Tom McGuire) who has just started running his steamship in direct competition with Bill – and it’s brand new, and he expects to squash Bill like a bug. The two men hate each other – and both forbid the two youngsters to be together. But they are in love.

Keaton’s Bill spends most of the movie trying, mostly in vain, to impress his father. His dad didn’t even know what he looks like, and when he comes to meet his son’s train, he thinks that every big, strapping lad his is boy – and doesn’t look twice at Keaton, who is nattily dressed and at one point prances around playing a ukulele to try and quiet a crying baby. His first impression of his son is not good – and it doesn’t get much better as Keaton, in his trademark style, screws up one thing after another aboard the ship. It gets so bad that he eventually buys Keaton a ticket home – he wants nothing more to do with him. But then Keaton not only breaks his father out of jail, but he also displays heroic actions during a cyclone that hits.

The cyclone sequence is one of the most famous in all of Keaton’s work – and it’s easy to see why. Keaton had done the “wall falling on him, but is saved by the window being in just the right place” gag before he did it in Steamboat Bill Jr. – but he perfected it here – using a bigger wall, and a smaller window. He then does several variations of it – as Keaton goes in and out of several doors and windows, of buildings that eventually come crashing down all around them. The stunt work in this sequence is among the best in Keaton’s entire filmography.

More than most of Keaton’s work, Steamboat Bill Jr. also has a stronger narrative through line – it isn’t just a bare bones plot as an excuse to build gags on, but an actual one that pays off as it goes along. It isn’t as needlessly complex as Battling Butler, where Keaton had to spend too much time explaining everything either. It is the perfect mixture of narrative and stunt work.

Steamboat Bill Jr. is probably a notch below Keaton’s absolute masterpieces – Our Hospitality, Sherlock Jr. and The General – but only a notch. For most directors, a film as great as Steamboat Bill Jr. would be the high water mark of their career – the fact that this film is fighting for fourth place in Keaton’s filmography is a testament to just how great his work was, not an insult to this film at all.

The Films of Buster Keaton: College (1927)

College (1927)
Directed by: Buster Keaton & James W. Horne.
Written by: Carl Harbaugh and Bryan Foy.
Starring: Buster Keaton (Son), Anne Cornwall (The Girl), Flora Bramley (Her Friend), Harold Goodwin (A Rival), Snitz Edwards (The Dean), Carl Harbaugh (Crew Coach), Sam Crawford (Baseball Coach), Florence Turner (A Mother).
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College is one of Buster Keaton’s least known features – a box office failure at the time, and one that hasn’t really gotten a critical interpretation in the years since everyone has agreed he was a genius. And there is a reason for that – it is a decidedly minor Keaton film – one that really is just a series of gags, quite a few of them quite funny, but none of them rising to the best work of Keaton’s career. Like other minor Keaton features – Three Ages, Go West and Battling Butler – that doesn’t mean it’s a bad film by any means. It’s still quite funny in parts. But it doesn’t reveal the man’s full genius either. Keaton, who often worked in parody in his short films – and some have suggested in Go West where he mocked Chaplin’s sentimentality by having a love story between himself and a cow – so you have to wonder a little bit if Keaton was trying to parody Harold Lloyd’s successful 1925 silent comedy – The Freshman. Both films are about a nerdy, bookish intellectual on a University campus who want to become star athletes, with hilarious results. But while normally I prefer Keaton to Lloyd, if that is the case, than Lloyd won this round – The Freshman is a fairly great silent comedy, and College is an average one.

We first meet Buster Keaton’s character – curiously referred to as A Son in the credits, although he’s called Ronald throughout the film – at his high school graduation (yes Keaton, well into his 30s at the time is playing an 18 year old – just go with it) – where he is valedictorian, and in his speech, he belittles and mocks the athletes in the crowd, while blowing his own horn on his studious excellence. The girl he loves – Anne Cornwall – is none too impressed with the speech, telling him that anyone who prefer a strong athlete to a weak kneed teacher’s pet – and unless he changes his mind about athletics, she won’t change her mind about him.

Flash forward a few months, with Ronald and the Girl both at the same college. Determined to win over the girl, Ronald tries desperately to be good at sports. He plays baseball (Keaton was a huge baseball fan) – and that ends hilariously poorly. He tries his hand at several different track and field events, and then go even worse. The Dean calls him into his office wanting to know why a star pupil has done so poorly in his studies – and Ronald explains he’s trying to impress a girl with his non-existent athletic abilities. The dead has an idea – Ronald is small enough to make an excellent coxswain on the rowing team – and makes the coach take him aboard.

The plot of College is thin even by silent comedy standards. It essentially consists of Keaton trying and failing at the various sports, trying and failing at his various part time jobs he needs to have to go to school - including an ill-advised sequence where Keaton dons blackface so he can get a job as a colored waiter. Perhaps it’s a little less racist because Keaton isn’t “playing” an African American character – he’s playing a white character who tries to pass himself off as black – but anytime you have to justify something by suggesting that “perhaps it’s a little less racist” – it’s still something that shouldn’t have been done. Much like Keaton’s use of blackface in some of his shorts – like The Playhouse (or the Redface in The Paleface) it’s hardly the most egregious or racist use of blackface of the era – and isn’t really used to mock African Americans in anyway – but it’s still something that leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

The highlight of the movie is undoubtedly the finale (Keaton always pulled out all the stops in the last reel) – where Ronald has to participate in an important crew race – including his hilarious improvisation that allows his team to win (although in reality, one suspects it would have slowed the team down in reality). He then has to race across campus to save his girl from the clutches of his rival – along the way showing how he can excel at all the track and field events he screwed up earlier in the film.

Keaton was a genius, but even during the course of the 1920s, where he frequently made comic masterpieces, there are a few films where he seems to simply be coasting on his charm and skills. Here, he plays a classic Keaton archetype – the seemingly weak man who has to prove himself to the woman he loves. He faces down one obstacle after another with his great stone face. He will not be deterred from his goal. College is an amusing movie – I’ve seen it twice now, and enjoyed it both times. But it doesn’t come close to his best work. Coming on the heels of The General, his biggest, most complicated film, perhaps he simply wanted to do a simple movie. He did that – and he made it quite enjoyable. But it’s nowhere close to what Keaton could do.

The Films of Buster Keaton: The General (1927)

The General (1927)
Directed by: Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman.   
Written by: Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman.
Starring: Buster Keaton (Johnnie Gray), Marion Mack (Annabelle Lee), Glen Cavender (Captain Anderson), Jim Farley (General Thatcher), Frederick Vroom (A Southern General), Charles Henry Smith  Charles (Annabelle's Father), Frank Barnes (Annabelle's Brother), Joe Keaton (Union General), Mike Donlin (Union General), Tom Nawn (Union General).

The General is widely considered to be Buster Keaton’s best film – and even if personally I prefer Sherlock Jr. – I wouldn’t argue very strenuously against anyone who picked this film instead. The film shows Keaton at the height of his powers – including some of the best, most jaw dropping stunt work ever committed to film. It is also one of Keaton’s best narratives – with a story that moves at a breakneck pace for all 78 minutes of its runtime. I think Keaton has made funnier films and more magical films – but I’m not sure he’s made one quite this daring or as fast moving.

Keaton stars as Johnnie Gray – a Southern railroad engineer who is dejected when the Confederates won’t take him at the start of the Civil War. What he doesn’t quite understand is that they feel he will be more valuable to the South as an engineer than as a soldier. His beloved Annabelle (Marion Mack) is ashamed of him – and tells him she doesn’t want to see him again until he’s in a Confederate uniform.

A year passes, and Johnnie is still depressed and alone – and still an engineer. Union spies steal his beloved train – The General – and Johnnie gives chase – on foot, by bike, by sidecar and finally by hoping in another train and chasing him down. At various points, Johnnie thinks he has Confederate soldiers backing him up – but he keeps messing that up, so he’s all by himself, chasing down a group of soldiers who will do whatever necessary to stop him. The movie is essentially one long chase sequence – or two really – as first Johnnie has to catch up and retake his beloved train, and then he has to run away from the Union spies who chase him down after he steals it back.

There is great stunt work by Keaton throughout The General. He will, at various times, run to the front of the engine – where sitting on the “cow catcher” clear the tracks of the logs placed their to try and derail him – often by daringly throwing other large block of wood onto them, so they flip off. He’ll run back and forth to the cars he’s pulling – fire a canon – jump on and off the train to pull the levers to switch tracks. He does this all with ease – far more ease in fact that the chase back to the South, where he’s saddled with his beloved Annabelle, who screws up more than she gets things right.

Much of The General happens at breakneck speed. There are few movies that are able to keep up this kind of pacing throughout the film – and even fewer that are able to provide this much action, humor and genuine heart than The General does. There is great stunt work throughout – but also some moments of wonderful, quieter visual power and humor – Keaton sitting on the spoke of a train that starts moving while he doesn’t notice, the background action as he’s so busy chopping wood he doesn’t notice a battle going on around him, the wonderful sequence where Keaton hides under a table and listens to the Union’s plans – and sees his beloved and knows he must rescue her.

At the time it was made, The General was one of the most expensive films ever. It’s easy to see why when you consider the cast of extras, the battle sequences and the fact that Keaton really does have a train crash off of a bridge. You could argue that The General was not unlike the blockbusters of today – yet no filmmaker today could do what Keaton does here. Yes, he has a ton of money being spent on his movie, but he never loses sight of his characters or the plot.

The movie is Keaton at his best – probably the film I would recommend that anyone start with when viewing Keaton for the first time. You’ll see him at his best – the Great Stone Face – as one damn thing after another conspires to crush him, and yet he simply puts his head down and charges right through. Quite simply, The General is a masterpiece.