Buster Keaton once named the film he was the proudest of
Known for his trademark style of physical comedy expressed with an unwavering deadpan expression, Buster Keaton forged a lasting legacy that will likely be remembered for many years to come. Nicknamed ‘The Great Stone Face’ for his signature stoicism, Keaton is widely regarded as one of the defining actors and filmmakers of the silent era of cinema, ranked as the 21st-greatest male star of classic Hollywood by the American Film Institute, and cited by the late Roger Ebert as “the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies”.
With an expansive career and filmography ranging from the two-reelers in the 1910s to full-on features of the 1920s, there’s no shortage of material to demonstrate Keaton’s masterful command of the screen. Out of all of them, however, is one movie the actor and director considered his proudest achievement: The General, released in 1926.
Adapted from William Pittenger’s memoir The Great Locomotive Chase, the film follows a southern railroad worker, Johnny (played by Keaton), who is given the opportunity to prove his valour after being mistakenly labelled a coward. When his fiancée becomes an inadvertent prisoner of Union Soldiers during the Civil War, Johnny has to use all his shrewdness and agility to face off against the northern forces and reclaim his bride-to-be.
Unlike many of his other pictures, it is the film’s basis on real events that proved to be such a source of pride for Keaton. In 1963, he stated: “I was more proud of that picture than any I ever made. Because I took an actual happening out of the history books, and I told the story in detail too”. The film, however, was initially met with a lukewarm response by the critics and failed to turn in a significant profit, earning a meagre $1,000,000 on its huge (for the period) budget of $750,000. At the time, critics panned the project for its extended chase scenes and selected humour.
Fortunately for Keaton, regard for his film steadily grew, and The General came to be known as a masterpiece, with Orson Welles later calling it “the greatest comedy ever made… and perhaps the greatest film ever made”. Whilst the immediate critical reception and box-office failure of The General led to the acclaimed filmmaker being stripped of his independence and strong-armed into a deal with MGM, the 1926 release by United Artists would ultimately go on earn universal acclaim.
Selected for preservation United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, Keaton’s proudest picture lives on as one of the finest examples of cinema in its earliest form.
