Train kept-a-rollin'

The General is widely considered Buster Keaton’s masterpiece and his most ambitious project among the 30-plus feature films he starred in, 12 of which he directed or codirected, and among the 70 shorts he appeared in. Sherlock Jr., The Navigator, and Steamboat Bill, Jr. are common contenders for that title, but most regard The General – which celebrates a vaunted Centennial birthday this year – as the standout among Keaton’s filmography.

Released in late 1926, The General is set during the American Civil War and inspired by the true "Great Locomotive Chase" of 1862. The film stars Keaton as Johnnie Gray, a deadpan Southern railroad engineer who loves two things: his fiancée, Annabelle Lee (played by Marion Mack), and his locomotive, The General. After being rejected from the Confederate Army because he is deemed more valuable as an engineer—a reason neither he nor Annabelle understands—Johnnie is branded a coward. However, he finds a chance for redemption when Union spies hijack The General with Annabelle accidentally on board. The plot follows Johnnie’s relentless, single-handed pursuit of the train behind enemy lines, featuring legendary, high-stakes stunts performed by Keaton himself, culminating in a heroic rescue and his ultimate acceptance into the military.

To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of The General, conducted earlier this month, click here. To hear the latest Cineversary podcast episode, celebrating The General’s 100th anniversary, click here.

This picture boasts perhaps the best combination of stellar production design, daring stunts, sophisticated narrative structure, and characterization/performance by Keaton among all his works. There are also a number of memorable comedic bits and running gags, including a dejected Johnnie sitting on the connecting rod of the locomotive’s drive wheels, his body rhythmically going up and down as the train moves; Johnnie attempting to enlist in the Army but being rejected, resulting in a crestfallen walk where he unknowingly marches in sync with a line of soldiers; Johnnie frantically running atop the moving train cars, oblivious to the fact that the rear half of the train has been uncoupled and is rolling away behind him; our hero hurling heavy fuel logs into the tender car, only for their impact to perfectly catapult other logs out of the pile and back onto the tracks in a frustratingly symmetrical cycle; while trying to load a massive cannon, Johnnie accidentally aiming it at his own locomotive, only for a curve in the track to save him at the last possible second; Johnnie using a long piece of timber as a makeshift lever to derail an enemy supply car, only to have the beam snap back and nearly take him with it; the stoneface tripping over and losing his sword multiple times; and Johnnie attempting to kiss his girlfriend while simultaneously swift-saluting every passing soldier, resulting in a mechanical, repetitive display of affection and duty.

Indeed, this could be the greatest silent comedy of all time. Consider that only around 25% of all films made during the silent era have survived; Thankfully, The General is one of them, and it remains one of the most beloved, accessible, and evergreen titles in the silent canon – a fantastic starting point for introducing new generations to the artistry and entertainment value of silent cinema.

This was an epic production, especially for a comedy, 100 years ago, and one of the most expensive and logistically difficult pictures of its era. With a budget estimated upwards of $750,000, the film reenacted Civil War battle sequences on a massive scale for a motion picture, using up to 1,500 extras and 3,000 people on payroll. The production purchased and refurbished full-size 1860s-era locomotives and filmed for about five months on location near Cottage Grove, Oregon. Its most famous sequence — the deliberate wreck of a burning locomotive into the Row River — cost approximately $42,000, making it the most expensive single shot in silent film history. The high production values, larger budget, grand scale, and attention to detail and period authenticity are evident onscreen a century later, helping The General stand the test of time as an entertaining and historically important movie.

This is also one of the all-time great chase films ever made. Arguably, The General plays better today as a romantic adventure than a comedy. It may not be as funny as some of Keaton’s other works, and it’s not a consistent laugher from beginning to end (the first major laugh, a pratfall off the porch, doesn’t occur until about six minutes in); but the chase sequences and high-risk action make for a compelling watch in 2026, particularly considering the limitations of that silent era and the extent to which Keaton was willing to take chances.

Additionally, the film is fascinating today as a historical artifact unto itself, not just as an adaptation of a historical event. “Like many silent films, The General offers things to a modern viewer that would not have been apparent to anyone seeing it in theaters during its original release,” wrote critic James Berardinelli. “The first is the pleasure of watching how the tale was realized by men and women working nearly a century ago. The second is observing the accuracy of what has become a distant historical event from the perspective of those living only 60-odd years after-the-fact. (At the time when The General was made, there were still people living who had fought in the Civil War.) The General is arguably more valuable as a historical document than a fictional feature.”

The Library of Congress took notice. In 1989, The General was honored as one of the inaugural films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry, alongside first-year inductees like Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Gone with the Wind, Singin' in the Rain, Star Wars, and The Wizard of Oz. Additionally, the film’s critical legacy is cemented by its high placement in the decennial Sight & Sound polls, where international critics ranked it #8 in 1972, #10 in 1982, #32 in 2012, and #95 in 2022. The American Film Institute listed the film as #18 on both its 2000 "100 Laughs" and its 2007 "100 Movies" anniversary lists. The General was featured in Time Magazine’s "All-Time 100 Movies" list and its top 100 actors list (with Keaton ranking #35), and was named as the #1 silent film of all time by the Silent Era database. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film currently holds a near-perfect 93% score.

The story was inspired by and adapted from an 1889 memoir by William Pittenger based on a true train Chase event that happened during the American Civil War. The cinematography and look of the picture drew influence from Matthew Brady’s work as a Civil War photographer.

Impressively, despite the special-effects limitations of its day, The General prefigures later chase pictures like North by Northwest (1959), Bullitt (1968), The French Connection (1971), Duel (1971), The Blues Brothers (1980), The Road Warrior (1981), and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). One could further connect the dots between Keaton’s locomotive actioner and the opening chase sequence in Sullivan’s Travels (1941), the high-stakes railway tension of The Train (1964), the thrills and massive crash showcased in Silver Streak (1976), the mechanical chaos and high-speed suspense of Runaway Train (1985), the elaborate comedic choreography of The Wrong Trousers (1993), the intense train stunts featured in The Fugitive (1993), the track-switching gags of The Legend of Zorro (2005), the visceral desert convoy battles of Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), and the harrowing practical train-top set pieces of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023).

Perhaps it’s a stretch, but this film may have even inspired The Dukes of Hazzard TV show that ran in the early 1980s. Both feature an iconic Southern vehicle named "General" as a central character, and both rely on vehicular slapstick and relentless chase sequences, where resourceful underdogs use their machines to outmaneuver authority figures were made to look like bumbling amateurs in a series of perfectly timed physical gags.

Although it’s not a remake, and it tells the tale from the Union’s perspective, the story was retold as a straight historical drama by Walt Disney Pictures in The Great Locomotive Chase (1956).

Jackie Chan has often cited Buster Keaton as his primary influence, adopting the silent star’s talents for performing his own death-defying, practical stunts while using the surrounding environment and everyday props to create meticulously choreographed action-comedy sequences.

Keaton was dubbed “the great stoneface” because he maintained a blank countenance, allowing his body and kinetic movement to elicit emotion and audience response instead of his facial expressions. Trained as a vaudeville acrobat and gifted with natural athletic talents, he wasn’t afraid to perform death-defying stunts and acts of derring-do as a performer and character.

“Watching Keaton today, we realize that he's the most modern of all silent screen masters,” wrote DVD Journal reviewer Mark Bourne. “His ongoing travails at the whims of The Machine — meaning his beloved mechanical contrivances as well as Nature or "the Establishment" — make him our contemporary…there's something about Keaton's restrained, underplayed determination as he faces each new obstacle that feels refreshingly timely. The Little Tramp was Chaplin's ‘Everyman,’ self-consciously created to embody all people from all times…But it's Keaton's innocent yet unflappable achiever we more identify with. As Keaton himself put it, ‘Charlie's tramp was a bum with a bum's philosophy. Lovable as he was, he would steal if he got the chance. My little fellow was a workingman, and honest.’ We feel for the Tramp, but we want to be like Keaton.”

Keaton fans can tell that this was a real passion project for the filmmaker, one that he relished and was ultimately most proud of. That’s because the filmmaker adored trains and was a student of history. Rejecting the artificiality of studio backlots, Keaton invested a staggering $42,000 to acquire three authentic 1860s locomotives and relocated his entire production to Oregon to capture a landscape that mirrored a pristine, 19th-century Georgia. This commitment to realism led him to shun miniatures for the film's climax, famously opting to incinerate a full-sized train and collapse a wooden bridge into the Culp Creek riverbed to achieve genuine mechanical destruction. He treated the locomotives as essential costars, ensuring that every track switch, uniform, and coupling rod met a standard of period accuracy virtually unmatched in the silent era.

Interestingly, Keaton and his collaborators changed the story to make it more of an underdog narrative. The real-life event that inspired the movie was the Great Locomotive Chase of 1862, a daring Union military raid in which a group of men hijacked a locomotive called The General in Georgia with the intent of destroying the Western & Atlantic Railroad, only to be pursued over 87 miles by Confederate conductor William Fuller in a relentless chase involving multiple stolen trains. In the film, however, Keaton plays a Confederate hero opposed by Union antagonists, and we root for him and his mission against the Northerners.

Production of The General proved much more challenging than his previous pictures. There were a number of accidents during filming that ballooned the budget. A train wheel crushed a brakeman’s foot, resulting in a costly lawsuit; an assistant director was shot in the face with a blank cartridge; several fires were caused by the wood-burning engine of the primary train used, blazes that spread to the surrounding countryside and cost thousands to extinguish; additionally, Keaton was knocked unconscious during one scene.

Keaton risked his life several times during the shooting. He sprinted across railcar roofs and sat on a side-coupling rod – a stunt filmed in a single take where one mechanical slip or wheelspin could have proved fatal. He even perched on the engine's cow-catcher to hurl one railroad tie at another to clear the tracks, a precisely timed feat where any error in strength or coordination would have resulted in a deadly derailment. As was true of his earlier films, he performed all of his own stunts without a double.

Keaton certainly suffered for his art. Because the film was not a box office success, was costly to make, and didn’t garner widespread praise from critics, Keaton was stripped of his creative freedom after producer Joseph Schenck sold the star’s contract to MGM, which effectively ended Keaton’s era of independence and control over many of his earlier pictures.

The narrative structure of The General is crafty. Consider how action and events in the first half of the film are echoed in the second half, with clever reboots of the humorous bits you saw earlier on display, only with the protagonist more firmly in control. “There's an impressively classical symmetry to The General's construction,” per BBC reviewer Tom Dawson. “In the first half, Keaton's hero Johnnie Gray heads northwards in pursuit of the enemy soldiers, amusingly encountering various obstacles en route, such as slashed telegraph wires, switched points, uncoupled carriages and logs thrown onto the track. And in the second half, the roles are reversed and Johnnie is now fleeing southwards from the Yankees, deploying the very props that had previously hindered his progress to great comic effect.”

By using the railroad tracks as a literal and stylistic guide, Keaton adroitly used extended tracking shots to immerse the audience in a visceral sense of speed and momentum that defined the movie's comedic rhythm. To maximize the visual scale of his battles, Keaton ingeniously recycled a limited number of extras by filming them marching in one direction as Union troops, then swapping their costumes for Confederate gray to have them retreat across the frame from the opposite side. And ponder how sparingly the filmmakers use intertitles, allowing us to focus firmly on the visuals and appreciate this as a work of pure cinema where images, not words, tell the story.

At its heart, The General espouses the value of resourcefulness and ingenuity under pressure and the importance of adapting to your environment. According to Keaton scholar Noël Carroll, “The most recurrent themes in Keaton’s narratives and gags: the question of mastering and understanding causal relations in a world of things, on the one hand, and the question of correctly locating and precisely orienting oneself within one’s environment on the other hand.”

The General’s most generous endowment to us that it serves as a timeless testament to the spirit of the everyman underdog. Time and again, Johnnie – and, by extension, Buster Keaton – demonstrates resourcefulness, inventiveness, and improvisational genius in solving one challenge after another. Yes, these feats of daring and industrious virtuosity are in service to the comedy, as laughs are the prime fuel that propels this locomotive of levity. But, despite being vastly outnumbered by his adversaries, it’s Johnnie’s clever spontaneity and heroic resolve that capture our imaginations – as well as Keaton’s gift for adroitly manipulating his physical environment and different objects within to create unforgettable kinetic visual sequences and high-speed tension. A flesh-and-blood little engine that could, he acrobatically outwits his pursuers and reminds us of the inestimable value of ad-libbed action. When the chase begins, he does what he must to keep pace, from vigorously pumping away at a handcar to pedaling furiously on a penny-farthing bicycle. Johnnie sneaks his girl away in a sack, litters the tracks with obstacles to thwart his enemies, in the nick of time removes their obstacles (while sitting on the cowcatcher of the moving engine) to prevent a deadly derailment, and sets the Rock River Bridge afire – the visual coup de grace and his shrewdest sabotage. The descendants of Johnnie’s legacy of pluck and verve are evident in more modern screen characters, from Indiana Jones to Die Hard’s John McLean to Mad Max to Jackie Chan in Police Story to little Kevin McAllister in Home Alone. We salute you, Buster, and all the wonderful cinematic iterations that walked in your shoes.