The General

Any fans of trains and their usage in cinema can surely appreciate a film like The General, the 1926 silent comedy starring Buster Keaton. Co-directed by Clyde Bruckman (a frequent collaborator of Keaton's), The General, once dismissed by audiences and critics alike, is good, old-fashioned (yet problematic) fun.

Keaton is the handsome Johnnie, who (the title tells us) has two loves in his life: his train and his girl, Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack). But with Fort Sumter being fired on and the war beginning, it's time to enlist and impress his girl. However, Annabelle is so pro-war that she doesn't want to speak with Johnnie again until he's in uniform. Johnnie really doesn't want to enlist, but because of his profession as a train engineer, he is denied, as he is considered more valuable to the South as an engineer than as a soldier. He tries again, but fails. "If you lose this war, don't blame me!" he tells them.

Some time passes, and Union spies, led by Captain Anderson (Glen Cavender), steal a train called The General in order to burn the railroad tracks, thus hindering the Confederates from being able to send reinforcements. Annabelle is captured by them. While washing his hands, Johnnie sees what has happened and chases after them, first on foot, then by handcar, then on a large bicycle before finally commanding a train singlehandedly in pursuit. Fearing that they are greatly outnumbered, the Yankees do not stop to fight. It's long into the chase before they realize they're being trailed by just one man.

For better or worse, this movie is all about Keaton's Johnnie and the battle of the dueling trains. Most of the actors aren't given anything to do, including Mack, who retired from acting two years later and started a career in real estate in California. Starting in 1970, however, she started being interviewed about her experience on the film and attended screenings of The General after renewed interest in the film. Buster Keaton died four years earlier in 1966.

As amusing and stirring as The General is, the most unfortunate decision by Keaton and his team is the gentle treatment they gave the Confederates. Why did Keaton create a film that glorifies the Confederates as heroes? This question was explored in Kristin Hunt's fascinating article titled "What Drove Buster Keaton to Try a Civil War Comedy"? Keaton, according to Hunt, had numerous reasons to make the film not extol the very people who betrayed the country in order to preserve slavery: He was the son of two Yankee parents in Kansas (unlike Birth of a Nation director D.W. Griffith, whose father was a Confederate colonel), and the source material was written by a Union veteran (William Pittenger), so the heroes in the event that the film is loosely based on ("The Great Locomotive Chase") were the Yankees. So why did he change the heroes from the Yankees to the Confederates? It's not entirely clear, but it may have been due to the enormous popularity of the racist group called the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which was at its peak of its campaign erecting monuments to the Confederacy and promoting "Lost Cause" mythology around the country.

The General might not be as frightening as The Birth of a Nation or as cringe-worthy as Gone With the Wind in its depictions of slavers, but its message is clear. It is the one palpable discomfort in watching the film nearly one hundred years later, as the country grapples with systemic racism and is in a years-long process of tearing down these statues. Beyond that, The General features a romantic and simplistic view of the Civil War. Fortunately, though, much of the non-political stuff works, even today, and it's usually an exciting feature. Even amateur film fans would be able to recognize its influence on later action-comedy films featuring train chases, like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Back to the Future III.

As a performer, Keaton is at the top of his game. He's incredibly agile and energetic in the film, constantly running back and forth and hurling giant logs of wood off and on the train like a clumsy yet resourceful action hero, constantly finding ways to outmaneuver his opponents. The numerous stunts make it seem like it was a miracle Keaton and others weren't injured on set. Many of the practical effects are a marvel to watch, even if it's simply Keaton throwing a giant train-track block of wood onto another just time to before his train collides with it.

Given its exciting nature, it is curious that the film wasn't a bigger hit at the time. Most of the reviews compared it unfavorably to Keaton's previous work, and the film entered the public domain in 1955 after United Artists decided not to renew the copyright. Perhaps the comedy was simply too soon; only about sixty years had passed since the end of the Civil War. (That's a smaller time gap than the time that has passed between now and the end of World War II.) Robert Sherwood put it this way: "Someone should have told Buster that it is difficult to derive laughter from the sight of men being killed in battle." This remains true today, with some of the battle humor coming across as somewhat morbid. Maybe the wounds of the Civil War hadn't healed for many audience members and critics. Today, after sixty years of being rediscovered treasure, its embrace of Confederates may cost it its place in cinematic history yet again.  

This review was originally published at the Public Domain Film Review on August 10, 2020.

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The Language of Hollywood

Wesleyan College and Coursera offer an exciting MOOC (massive open online course) for film lovers. Titled "The Language of Hollywood: Storytelling, Sound and Color," it's led by Scott Higgins and is a free course examining the history of storytelling with sight, sound and color from the Silent Era to the present day. Here's a look at the films included in the class:

Street Angel
Starring the near-perfect Janet Gaynor and her costar from "7th Heaven," Charles Farrell, this is Frank Borzage's melodramatic love story with a simple plot about a young woman named Angela (Gaynor) who is forced on the street to become a "street angel" in order to pay for a proscription for her ill mother. Angela's run from the law finds her in the loving arms of Gino (Farrell), who is determined to provide for her. One of Higgins' motivation for including the film in the syllabus is Borzage's exuberant visuals, which had the purpose of "externalizing emotions." This is perhaps best demonstrated in the exciting climax in which Gino, bitter about losing his love for reasons he does not understand, lights a match to the face of every woman he encounters; inevitably, he comes across Angela, whose once hopeless face now matches the brightness of the flame. Gino, however, glares back, and the match extinguishes. The film briefly becomes a horror movie. Note the stupidity in such a situation -- we are forced to believe that these two characters happen to both be walking out at night and both happen to be in the same spot in Naples at the same time, and yet we do. Higgins has a theory for this: Silent pictures (especially Borzage's) are emotionalized and abstract, like an opera, whereas sound films have increasingly been grounded in reality. This allows for a heightened sense of melodrama, which critics often complained about. But Borzage's response was that life was melodramatic. This belief guided his rule for movie making: make the audience sentimental, so the players don't have to be.

The Docks of New York
A bit shorter than the previous film and much less melodramatic, "The Docks of New York," from the same year as "Street Angel," takes place in a much smaller, tighter, colder, less romantic, more specific, stronger, and more grounded world. The world is the docks of New York, and more specifically the saloon and hotel. The saloon is not a vast area of lighthearted romance, but a small, degenerate bar with a rowdy group of people searching for sex. The Stoker (George Bancroft) is a big, gruff man, who, despite his affection for one-night stands, falls in love with a woman (Betty Compson) he's rescued from drowning herself. They marry in an orgy of decadence; as Higgins puts it, it's an arena where the saloon patrons find marriage to be a dirty joke. The movie certainly starts with a lot more excitement but bores as it progresses, ending in a similar preposterous manner of "Street Angel." This does not make "The Docks of New York" a bad film, however, it does require a bit more patience.

Applause
Now we're in the era of sound, with "Don Juan" showing the world that film can be accompanied by an orchestral score, "The Jazz Singer" showing us that there can be (a few) audible moments, and "Lights of New York" demonstrating that movies can be all-talking (though Higgins doesn't recommend viewing the film because of the low quality of its content). So we have a 1929 Paramount film called "Applause," by Rouben Mamoulian, and starring Helen Morgan. It cannot be doubted that Mamoulian had a talent for innovation, but the limitations of the technology at the time are too distracting; sound projection and synchronization were tremendous obstacles for early cinema pioneers like Thomas Edison and William Dickson, and yet even by 1929, the sound was so dismal that it seems like barely half of what was being spoken can be interpreted. (Before 1930, there were no blimped cameras, boom mics or sound editing equipment.) Joan Peters as Morgan's daughter looks the part but provides such horribly Transatlantic diction that the annoyance is only surpassed by the awful voice of Fuller Mellish, Jr. as the story's villain. I understand why the acting is so atrocious, but that does not mean I have to like the film, nor does the fact that its technological innovations and feminist viewpoint improve my opinion of it very much. In my mind, it should be stricken from the syllabus.

Monkey Business
The class moves into specific genres, starting with comedy, or more specifically, vaudeville. Set almost entirely on a cruise ship until they have exhausted just about all they could do with the specific situation, Grouch, Chico, and Harpo -- the Marx Brothers -- and their less shticky brother, Zeppo, star in their third film. "Monkey Business," from 1931, has aged a bit; Professor Higgins remarks that the situation comedy is sort of a "law of diminishing returns" with respect to each situation involving less for the brothers to do, but it also features fewer returns in the sense that the over-the-top slapstick hasn't aged so well. Still, it is a humorous change of pace for the course. Grouch's verbal barrage, Chico's piano scene, and Harpo's pantomime and harp scene, all practically self-contained acts that are gag-centered and feature practically no logic, are all delightful (though the racism and anti-women moments are all creepy). It's a very labor-intensive production by these four, particularly the three more recognizable Marx brothers. (Zeppo didn't continue to pursue the vaudeville-style film performances, but eventually became a millionaire through his work in film engineering.) There's such anarchic bursts of energy throughout it all as they run around the ship in a "world of straight men," tearing up the scenery, sometimes literally.

Scarface 
While just about everyone has seen Brian DePalma's 1983 remake, less folks have seen its source: the original, from 1932, produced by Howard Hughes, directed by Howard Hawks, and based on a story by Paul Hecht. Sold as sort of a societal film (that at times comes across as too unnecessarily preachy), it is nevertheless quite stylized with great sound effects and dark expressionistic lighting; just as the oranges in "The Godfather" four decades later, the cinematography in "Scarface" featured at least one letter X whenever a character was about to be killed. Paul Muni, who would go on to win an Oscar and a Tony, puts in a pretty stellar performance of the title character, though he sometimes overdoes it (perhaps influencing the bombastic yet iconic performance of Al Pacino in the remake sixty years later). Also supplying decent performances are George Raft, Karen Morley, Ann Dvorak and Boris Karloff, who a year earlier shot to stardom with Universal's "Frankenstein." Fans of "Some Like It Hot" might recognize Raft poking fun at his coin-flipping image from "Scarface." With all due respect to the remake, I think I might like this one better.

The Ghost Ship
Another genre explored is horror, although Higgins admits immediately that this could hardly be defined as a horror film. It's more of a psychological thriller, produced by the Val Lewton low-budget unit at RKO films. Lewton, whose more famous low-budget horrors include "Cat People," "The Body Snatcher," and "I Walked With a Zombie," and director Mark Robson are more interested in suggestion and utilize a lot of sinister, low lighting. Taking place almost entirely in a claustrophobic ship led by a captain (Richard Dix) suffering from the onset of insanity, "The Ghost Ship" was a hit in 1943, but a lawsuit by two playwrights caused it to be pulled from theaters and not shown for another fifty years, and it wouldn't be discovered again until it entered the public domain. Despite a genuinely eerie start and a thrilling sequence involving a giant hook, "The Ghost Ship" soon becomes a more boring version of "The Caine Mutiny," and at a length of just over an hour, it barely is saved in time. Higgins, though, does an effective job at explaining why the film is important, and he claims that the way it uses sound to create such an unsettling atmosphere for perhaps the first time by a Hollywood film is why "The Ghost Ship" deserves to be studied.

The Trail of the Lonesome Pine
The second three-color film ("Becky Sharp," opening to harsher reviews, was the first), "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine" from 1936 is considered the first to set aesthetic standards for films in color. Despite the limitations the crew had in requiring more lighting than black-and-white films, "Lonesome Pine" is a "film of restraint," filmed with a lot of neutrals (grays and browns) that surprisingly still looks gorgeous. That said, despite its technological advances, this film, while not as torturous as "Applause," bores more often than not. Its cast is mostly sufficient -- Sylvia Sydney, Fred Stone, and Beulah Bondi (James Stewart's mother in four films, including "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and "It's a Wonderful Life") are pretty good, but its male leads, Fred MacMurray and Henry Fonda, two of the 20th century's most respected actors, mostly disappoint. MacMurray laughs and smiles a lot, while Fonda mostly looks angry; neither of the two provide much else. Just about every viewer, though, will delightfully recognize two actors: George McFarland (Spanky in the "Our Gang"/"Little Rascals" series) and Clara Blandick, who appears in a small role in one scene, and whom most viewers would easily recognize as Aunt Em in "The Wizard of Oz."

The Adventures of Robin Hood
Most likely the most well-known of Higgins' list of films in his syllabus, "The Adventures of Robin Hood" was filmed on a budget of $2 million at a time when the average production cost per film was several hundred thousand dollars. The costs largely paid off, and despite the ostentatious laughter throughout, "The Adventures of Robin Hood" is quite good fun. Originally to star James Cagney, it instead reunites Errol Flynn with his "Captain Blood" co-stars Olivia de Havilland and Basil Rathbone, and it was Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" that inspired Warner Bros. to film it in Technicolor. Its color palate is much denser, according to Higgins, than "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine," with many more colors, almost like a mosaic. The primary vehicle for this is its extravagant costume designs. Its cast includes Claude Rains, Eugene Pallette, Melville Cooper, Una O'Connor, and Alan Hale, Sr., who appeared here as Little John, and also did so in 1920 alongside Douglas Fairbanks, and then again in the role in 1950, making it one of the longest character spans in Hollywood history. But the real star is Rathbone, who is terrific in every scene.

All That Heaven Allows
Next to "Applause," Douglas Sirk's "All That Heaven Allows" is the worst film included in the course. True, this is a beautiful color design by Sirk and his cinematographer, Russell Metty; to be drained of color, Higgins tells us, is to lose life in a Sirk movie. There are great uses of matte paintings, including the farm scenes. The film's leads, Jayne Wyman and Rock Hudson, do a mostly decent job. But "All That Heaven Allows" is, on the whole, quite boring. Its impressive use of color doesn't erase this fact.

Punch-Drunk Love
Fortunately, Paul Thomas Anderson's "Punch-Drunk Love" from 2002 not only fantastically uses color, but also tells a great story. Calling this Anderson's least presumptuous film (because it's a 90-minute rom-com starring Adam Sandler), it tells the story of a man named Barry, tortured by his many sisters growing up and who probably has some kind of personality disorder. He falls in love with a friend of his sisters, but must protect her from being harmed by a violent group of men hunting him down for blackmail money due to Barry's one-time use of a phone sex operator. "Punch-Drunk Love" is half the length of "Magnolia," Anderson's previous film, and yet "Punch-Drunk Love" has aged so much better than "Magnolia" (which does suffer a bit from presumptuousness). It's one of Anderson's best films, certainly Sandler's best, and is the best film in the class. The best was saved for last.


There isn't too much to complain about this course. I've already mentioned that some of the films are less than impressive, and some of Higgins' lectures get a bit too carried away when discussing color. But Higgins has a plethora of film knowledge, and his course is a recommendable course, one that will likely teach you a lot about movie making.

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