Peter Kramer - The General

BFI Film Classics

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The General

Peter Krmer

For Thomas

Peter Krmer 2016

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Series text design: ketchup/SE14

Images from The General (Buster Keaton/Clyde Bruckman, 1926), Joseph M. Schenck;

Our Hospitality (Buster Keaton/Jack G. Blystone, 1923), Joseph M. Schenck Productions; Neighbors (Buster Keaton/Eddie Cline, 1921), Metro Pictures Corporation; Fatty at Coney Island (Roscoe Arbuckle, 1917), Comique Film Corporation; The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925),

Roy Export S.A.S.; The Iron Horse (John Ford, 1924), Fox Film Corporation; The Hollywood Revue (Charles F. Riesner, 1929), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Loews Incorporated.

Set by couch

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ISBN 9781844579150

Contents

Acknowledgments

As I finish this book in the autumn of 2015, I can look back on thirty years of research on Buster Keaton. The earliest stages of my work on his films took place in the context of an MA in Film Studies at the University of East Anglia in 1985/6. At that time, I was taught and mentored by Thomas Elsaesser, who continued with his guidance for many years afterwards. This book is dedicated to him.

I am also grateful to Kevin Brownlow, who opened his personal archive to me in the late 1980s, to Tom Dardis and Marion Meade, who supported my work in various ways around the same time, and to many archivists in the United States. Henry Jenkins was extraordinarily supportive during my first ever research trip to the United States in 1988, and gave me tremendous help with my first two publications on Keaton. I should also mention a group of dedicated Keatonians who I kept meeting at academic conferences in the United States and the UK over the years, especially Roberta Pearson, Joanna Rapf, Kevin Sweeney, Peter Parshall and Charles Wolfe. They helped me to keep my interest in Keaton alive, even after the focus of my film historical research had shifted to more recent decades. In the last few years, the students on my introductory film history course at UEA have shown a lot of enthusiasm for Keatons films, which encouraged me to consider writing about them again. Thanks a lot for this! Finally, I wish to thank Joseph Garncarz, Jenna Steventon and especially Lee Grieveson for feedback on my first draft of this book, and to Sophia Contento for her help with the pictures.

Introduction

The comedian Buster Keaton was just over thirty years old when he co-wrote, directed and starred in The General. The film was released in February 1927, towards the end of the era of silent cinema in the United States. Its playfully misleading title raises the expectation that the film focuses on the deeds of a military leader. In fact, TheGeneral recreates a famous Civil War episode a daring Northern raid into Southern territory from the perspective of a Southern civilian, and, unlike the war, the film ends with a catastrophic defeat for the North. The General was presented to the American public as a comedy spectacle, a phrase repeatedly used in the lavish press book produced by the films distributor United Artists, and picked up by many journalists. The American Civil War was not then, and is not now, an obvious subject for comedy. Prompted by the secession of a confederacy of Southern states from the United States of

America, the Civil War lasted from 1861 to 1865. At the heart of the conflict was the Southern institution of slavery, which was brought to an end by the Norths victory. Over 600,000 soldiers were killed, a number

approximately equal to the total American fatalities in the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. A similar rate, about 2 percent [of the total US population at the time], today would mean six million fatalities.