Buster Keaton - Steamboat Bill Jr. and The General | clown ministry | Reviews

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Buster Keaton Double Feature - Buster Keanon in The General - Buster Keaton Ernest Torrence in Steamboat Bill Jr. - with new music by The Alloy Orchestra - the best in the world at accompanying silent films

Editorial Review of The General / Steamboat Bill Jr., courtesy of Amazon.com

Buster Keaton’s career reached its creative apex with the rousing comic adventure The General. Not merely one of the finest silent films, this remains one of the great film comedies of all time. The Great Stone Face stars as Southern railroad engineer Johnny Gray, a man with only two loves: the sweet Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack) and his trustworthy engine, the eponymous General. When Fort Sumner is fired upon he’s one of the first to enlist, but when the war office rejects him (he’s too valuable as a trained engineer) his sweetie rejects him as a coward. Johnny has the opportunity to prove his bravery when Yankee spies steal his engine and inadvertently kidnap Annabelle, and Johnny pursues with all the resources at his disposal: handcar, bicycle, and finally railroad engine. Keaton’s love/hate relationship with technology and machinery shines as he becomes one with his beloved locomotive and wrestles with a finicky cannon that threatens to blow his engine off the tracks; with tremendous dexterity, he nails the humor with inimitably deadpan takes. Spunky Marion Mack makes a perfect partner for Keaton, not merely a foil but a gifted comedienne in her own right. Other Keaton films contain more laughs and inspired comic stunts, but none combines romance, adventure, and comedy into a solid story as seamlessly as this silent masterpiece. --Sean Axmaker

In Steamboat Bill Jr., Keaton stars in the story of a college-educated young man who comes home to help his father work on his Mississippi River steamboat and immediately demonstrates just what a landlubber he is. What’s worse, the woman he falls for is the daughter of his father’s worst rival, a bullying rich guy who wants to drive Buster’s boat out of business. Keaton’s slapstick is inspired and precise, particularly during an amazing sequence in which he tries to walk across town during a tornado. Watch in amazement as the front of a building falls on Keaton and he walks away without a scratch. --Marshall Fine

From the Back Cover of Buster Keaton - The General / Steamboat Bill Jr.

Often listed among the ten best films of all time, The General is Buster Keaton’s greatest work, at once a full-scale epic, a wonderful comedy, and an authentic-looking period drama. Buster plays Johnnie Grey, a locomotive engineer in the Confederate South whose two loves are his girl Annabelle and his engine, the General. When Northern commandoes kidnap Annabelle and hijack the General, running it North to cut telegraph lines, destroy track, and burn bridges behind them; Johnnie gives chase in another locomotive, the Texas. Steamboat Bill, Jr. also assures Keaton a place as one of the geniuses of world cinema as he plays Willie Canfield, an effete college student who returns to Mississippi to help his tough, crusty dad Steamboat Bill run the family steamboat (an old tub). But Junior has two strikes against winning his father’s approval: he’s not macho, and his girlfriend is the daughter of Bill’s hated business rival. The climax, a cyclone, contains one of cinema’s greatest moments: the two-ton front of a building collapses on top of Buster, but thanks to an open window passing over him, he remains standing and unhurt. These masterpieces of fun from comedy’s greatest era gain fresh life in sparkling prints with scintillating music and sound provided by The Alloy Orchestra. “These Boston-based musicians have rejuvenated the art of silent film with thrillingly quirky, percussive scores.” (Entertainment Weekly, “The 100 Most Creative People in Entertainment,” June 25, 1999)