Shawn Hall Buster Keaton made what is still considered the most expensive shot in all of silent film history when he wrecked a real Civil War–era train in his 1926 war comedy, The General. That one scene, adjusted for inflation, cost nearly half a million dollars.
It’s this grand scale—and attention to physical detail—that helped earn The General the number one spot on Silent Era’s Top 100 Silent Movies List, which I’m running a bi-weekly series reviewing each movie on the list, and sharing if I agree with its ranking.
The General crashes into the river in one of the most expensive shots in classic Hollywood.
In The General, Keaton plays Johnny Gray, a Southern train engineer at the outbreak of the Civil War. When he tries to enlist in the Confederate Army, he’s rejected—not for lack of bravery, but because his skills as a train engineer are deemed too valuable to lose. Unfortunately, his girlfriend Annabelle doesn’t know this and assumes he’s a coward. She refuses to speak to him until she sees him in uniform.
Not long after, Annabelle is kidnapped by Union soldiers and taken aboard Johnny’s train, The General. Johnny embarks on a daring solo mission to chase them down, which leads him deep into Union territory—and into the heart of the war itself.
Left: Buster gets rejected by his girl Right: Buster with his train The General
Though The General is now seen as a classic, it wasn’t always that way. Upon its original release, critics weren’t impressed. A Film Daily review upon the film’s release noted that “Keaton plays shy on this one. The laughs are slow and scattered over a lot of territory, but big effort in production.” Many reviews gave backhanded compliments, acknowledging the film’s impressive scale and dramatic weight, while criticizing it for lacking Keaton’s usual comedic edge.
To be fair, this criticism makes some sense. If you’re familiar with the surreal comedy of Keaton’s earlier films like Sherlock Jr. or romantic comedies like Seven Chances, The General feels like a departure. Many of the film’s gags are not quick throwaway jokes but build up slowly into a crescendo. Keaton’s physical gags throughout are deeply impressive in their timing, tension, and physical commitment. The humor here isn’t about punchlines; it’s about awe at the precision and danger of the stunt, and Keaton’s unwavering deadpan in the face of chaos.
Left: Keaton manages to clear the train tracks Right: Buster and his Marion Mack on The General.
Take, for example, the sequence in which Keaton tries to clear wooden blocks from the train tracks. Locked in a high-stakes chase to rescue his kidnapped girlfriend, Keaton’s path is blocked by debris the Union agents have dumped in his way. As he attempts to remove the wood, he stumbles and falls onto the train’s cowcatcher. While his clumsy fall earns a laugh, the real humor comes from watching him somehow manage to clear the tracks through sheer luck, all while never registering how miraculous his efforts were.
The General also leans more into drama, suspense, and historical action than pure slapstick, blending comedy with dramatic tension to raise the stakes. After watching his awkward yet determined efforts to clear the tracks, the audience is offered a sense of relief that his enemies haven’t succeeded in stopping our underdog’s missing to rescue his kidnapped romantic interest. There’s weight behind the laughs and emotion behind the action.
Another aspect of the film’s humor is how dark it’s willing to go. Keaton frequently uses soldiers’ deaths as the punchline to gags, which left a bad taste in some audiences at the time. But for modern viewers, who are generally more used to dark humor, this blend of death and comedy lands much more effectively.
Left: Buster lost without his train Right: Buster hiding from Union soldiers.
Keaton loosely based the story on the real-life Great Locomotive Chase in which a Union civilian scout commandeered a Confederate train. However, Keaton made the choice to shift his protagonist’s allegiance to the Confederacy. Keaton reportedly did this because he feared audiences wouldn’t accept the Confederates as villains, revealing just how widespread “Lost Cause” mythology and Civil War revisionism still were in early 20th-century America. It’s unfortunate that Keaton bought into that mindset, but it also reflects the cultural limitations of his era.
While I wouldn’t call The General a perfect film—and it’s not even my favorite Keaton movie (that honor goes to Sherlock Jr.)—I still think it’s a fantastic piece of filmmaking. It effortlessly balances drama and comedy while slowly building up one of the biggest set pieces of the silent era. The gags are some of the most precisely engineered in Keaton’s entire career, leaving you wondering How on earth did he pull that off?
Check out my video review of The General, complete with footage from the film.
So, is The General the greatest silent film ever made? I might not put it as my number one, but it absolutely deserves to be high in the top 100. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend watching it, ideally in a live theater setting with musical accompaniment. Luckily, it’s one of the most frequently screened silent films, and for good reason.
Next week I’ll be reviewing No. 99 on the list: Mary Pickford’s 1918 film Stella Maris. If you’re enjoying this series, follow along for more reviews of the greatest silent movies ever made.
