MAGNET contributing writer Jud Cost is sharing some of the wealth of classic films he’s been lucky enough to see over the past 40 years. Trolling the backwaters of cinema, he has worked up a list of more than 100 titles—from the ’20s through the ’80s—that you may have missed. A new selection, all currently available on DVD, appears every week.
The General (1926, 75 minutes)
Buster Keaton’s silent masterpiece, The General has been praised by no less than Orson Welles and Roger Ebert as one of the finest movies ever made. Keaton’s comedies usually found him wearing a “pork pie” hat (a cut-down stetson), and his deadpan countenance earned him the name “the great stone face.” The General, taking place in the early days of the Civil War, however, found the 30-year-old Keaton playing it straight.
As an engineer for the Western & Atlantic Railroad (WAR), Johnnie Gray (Keaton) loves his train’s locomotive, “the General,” almost as much as young Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack). He nervously shines his shoes on the back of his trousers as he knocks on her front door. No sooner do they get settled on the sofa, then her brother bursts in with the news that Fort Sumter in South Carolina has been fired upon by Union forces, and civil war is upon us. The brother immediately is off to enlist in the Confederate army.
Johnnie tries to join up, too, but he’s rejected as being too valuable to the South as a railroad engineer. “If you lose this war, don’t blame me,” he warns the enlistment officer. Annabelle’s brother thinks Johnnie is just a shirker. “He’s a disgrace to the South,” he tells his sister. When Johnnie explains to Annabelle that he’s been rejected, she says, “Don’t lie to me. I don’t want to speak to you again until you are in uniform.”
One year later, a Union spy named Captain Anderson hatches a plan to steal the General while the crew and passengers are taking a lunch break just outside Atlanta, then drive it north and cut the South’s supply lines by burning every bridge in Georgia. Anderson and his men are unaware that the only passenger who didn’t go to lunch is Annabelle, now bound and gagged on board the northward-bound General. Johnnie runs after his lumbering train, then commandeers another locomotive on a siding and continues the heroic one-man pursuit of his two loves.
Abandoning his chase during a driving rainstorm, he seeks shelter behind enemy lines and chooses a place appropriated by Union officers. Johnnie hides under the dinner table just in time to overhear the plans of Anderson and the Union brass. “Once we cross the Rock River Bridge tomorrow, nothing can stop us,” says one general.
Johnnie’s presence is nearly revealed when an officer accidentally burns a cigarette hole in the tablecloth and lifts it to extinguish the flames. “She was in the baggage car when I stole the train,” explains Anderson of a thoroughly soaked girl brought into the room. Johnnie peers through the hole in the tablecloth and recognizes the captive as Annabelle. He silently vows that the North shall never cross the Rock River Bridge tomorrow.
