1926 Directed by Buster Keaton, Clyde Bruckman
During America’s Civil War, Union spies steal engineer Johnnie Gray's beloved locomotive, 'The General'—with Johnnie's lady love aboard an attached boxcar—and he single-handedly must do all in his power to both get The General back and to rescue Annabelle.
将军, General, El maquinista de la general, Der General, Генералът, Kenraali, Le mécano de la Générale, Ο στρατηγός, Come vinsi la guerra, A Glória de Pamplinas, A Generális, A General, 제너럴, De Generaal
I'm not sure why people scoff at old movies. They are still new to those who have not seen them.
movies from like a hundred years ago are so depressing to me even though there are so many great comedies like this one cause like....these people don’t know what Advil is...they’ve never heard a josh groban song....they will never get to try the Panera double bread bowl
Them Yankee spies picked the wrong choo choo train to steal in this Buster Keaton classic. Hot date. A gentleman always tips his cap to a lady. Kodak moment. Dixie Land. Trickeration. The way Buster shakes his head. Wheel rider. Slick sideburns. Buster's bow tie. Bootleg rail car. Real motherfuckers ride big pimpin' bicycles. The baddies scare me. I bet they sound menacing. Gag a ho'. Buster has fantastic hair. Cannonball motherfucker. I don't think too many actors today would dare attempt the stunts Buster performs. I could dance to this groovy funky music. Firewood makes trains go faster. Any Quad City DJ's fans? You can't help but think of the song "C'mon N' Ride It" while viewing The General.…
My ascent up the top 250 has begun.
I’ll be watching every single film on the Letterboxd top 250 Narrative Features in reverse order.
Just for fun.
And this is the start.
#250 The General
I’ve been wanting to see this film for a while and I’m glad I got to it.
The comedy is amazing.
Watching Keaton grab wood blocks out of the way of the train is extremely entertaining.
The love story is nice.
The bit with the military attack at the end was just hilarious.
Everything Keaton did in that scene was perfect comedy wise.
Keaton is just in his prime here.
Every stunt is insane and every joke lands.
Even the little things like when he’s leaving…
i dont wanna hear jack shit about tom cruise's stunts in those mission impossible movies when buster keaton managed to do what he did in a film this romantic and grand that was released almost 100 years ago
Imagine escaping death this many times in one film.... The devil works hard, but Buster Keaton works harder.
Buster Keaton, I'm convinced, is a master at setting up comedic gags, and The General showcases what he can do with a large budget (making it even more of a shame that this flopped hard enough that he was here on out kept on a creative leash) when he applies his craft to impossibly large-scale setpieces.
The basic premise of the film is as follows: a Confederate soldier rides a train into Northern territory where hijinks ensue before he takes the same train back. Now, looking at this we get a two-fold structure, one where the first half establishes a map of potential incidents for the second half to realize. And when we return these certainly pay off, the geographical…
First of all, if anyone is planning on watching this movie then do not watch the Amazon Prime version. The quality is terrible, and you can easily find a 4K authentic version of it for free on Youtube. Although the version I found is in sepia and not black-and-white, it was definitely worth watching more than the 240p version on Prime.
Anyways, I thought this was supposed to be funny. Instead, it gave me anxiety more often than it made me laugh. Buster Keaton’s stunts are mind-blowing; they seem almost life-threatening but are remarkably impressive, nonetheless. Inspired by a battle from the American Civil War, known as the Great Locomotive Chase, The General spends most of its runtime inside a locomotive — shocking, right? Even though the film had these obvious limitations, it surprisingly never runs out of steam (pun not intended) as each thrilling action sequence is more astonishing than the last.
I honestly don't know what I can say that hasn't been said so many times before.
He was a genius and the films he made were genius.
A roller-coaster ride of laughter that was a critical & commercial failure during its time of release but is now considered as one of the greatest films ever made, The General is Buster Keaton's magnum opus & even though I'll put a few Charlie Chaplin films as well as Keaton's own Sherlock, Jr ahead of it, there is no denying that this silent classic is one of the most influential works of its era.
Set during the American Civil War, The General tells the story of a train engineer who loves his fiancé as much as he loves his locomotive. When the war breaks out, he tries to enlist but is rejected because of his value as an engineer although he's not…
Die Action ist immer noch gut bis heute nicht mehr vorstellbar. Genau so wenig wie es gut ist dass man patriotische Südstaatler gut findet.
Didn’t find it as funny as Sherlock Jr, but this is just astonishing on a technical level - at least equal to Metropolis in terms of how well it uses its massive scale. The stunt where Keaton uses one beam of wood to dislodge another from the tracks - I gasped, which isn't something I thought I did. I knew about the civil war setting, though I had no idea that this was a confederacy nostalgia piece - it’s weird how few reviews on here acknowledge that fact, or dismiss the relevance of the setting as if it wasn’t a choice on the part of the filmmakers. (Fascinatingly, wikipedia mentions that the memoir this was based on was written from a union perspective, but that Keaton “did not believe that the audience would accept Confederates as villains and changed the story's point of view”. Would love to read more on that.)
بلا شك إنتاج عظيم، وأفضل افلام بستر كيتون، قصة وحبكة جديّة ومتماسكة، الكوميديا كانت دخيلة وليست الأساس، عظمة على عظمة
Buster Keaton’s in a world of his own. goat.
stunts are off the charts. what an achievement for the time. who did the VFX on this??
this movie aligns the viewer with the side of the Confederacy during the Civil War and that is an automatic minus one. no apologies.
You took away a man's train... he'll go to desperate lengths to get it back...
This has all the stunts & great comedy you’d expect from a Buster Keaton film, but why oh why did this need to be told from the perspective of the Confederacy? There’s absolutely no reason why this couldn’t have a Union soldier as the protagonist. (As it was in the IRL history this story is inspired by!) I know this movie flopping led to a lot of personal problems for Keaton, but it’s actually heartening to know that audiences rejected this film back then for this reason.
Also, the train scenes in Our Hospitality were honestly more impressive than they were here. I felt like I had seen most of this before, by Keaton himself or by others. This is definitely my least favorite Keaton film I’ve seen so far.
Favorite moment: The iconic bridge collapse scene remains iconic. Crazy to think that it was the most expensive single shot in silent-film history.
I didn't love it, but I liked it. Seems like a movie I've seen a hundred times before, but in this case, it could be the origin.
Not particularly funny, but humorous.
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