THE GENERAL IS A ZOOM DISCUSSION HELD ONLINE.
Watch The General at your leisure and join the CinemaLit discussion online via Zoom on Friday, May 19. The General may be found on Kanopy by using your Mechanics' Institute library card or a San Francisco Public Library card. If additional support is needed, please contact us at [email protected].
Buster Keaton plays Civil War era engineer Johnnie Grey. Johnnie loves two things in this world: his girlfriend Annabelle and his train the General. When both are hijacked by Northern commandoes, Johnnie sets out on a perilous rescue mission. Keaton once said, "The moment you give me a locomotive and things like that to play with, as a rule I find some way to get laughs out of it." He wasn't kidding! The General offers non-stop textbook examples not only of sight gags and stunts, but of suspense, pacing, and romance, as well. Approaching its centennial, The General is still considered one of the greatest comedies of all time.
May 2023 at CinemaLit – Silent Spring
CinemaLit in May presents three classics from the final years of the silent film era. They are wildly different from each other, but united by the highest levels of film artistry before talkies arrived. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) was stylistically influenced by German Expressionism, but is very much its own creation. The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) is an engrossing early Alfred Hitchcock thriller. And The General (1926) is a diabolically clever Buster Keaton comedy.
Matthew Kennedy, CinemaLit’s curator, has written biographies of Marie Dressler, Joan Blondell, and Edmund Goulding. His book Roadshow! The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s, was the basis of a film series on Turner Classic Movies.
“I don't have a favorite film,” Matthew says. "I find that my relationships to films, actors, genres, and directors change as I change over the years. Some don't hold up. Some look more profound, as though I've caught up with their artistry. I feel that way about Garbo, Cary Grant, director John Cassavetes, and others."
“Classic films have historical context, something only time can provide,” Matt observes. “They become these great cultural artifacts, so revealing of tastes, attitudes, and assumptions.”
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CinemaLit Films
