The General

I just finished watching Buster Keaton's "The General": a silent film released in 1927. It is his best movie and Keaton is wonderful. He is known as the Great Stoneface because he never looks amused no matter how silly the stunt. He is a subtle actor and a brilliant director. He sets up his physical gags perfectly. His life revolves around his train, The General, and his girl, Annabelle Lee. When his train is stolen with his girl on board, Johnnie Gray--Keaton's character--goes to save them both from dozens of soldiers. He pulls out all the stops with train car gags, switching station gags, parallel train track gags, cannon gags, and even bear trap gags. You know the ones I mean; you've seen them copied a hundred times. Johnnie Gray, is brave and honorable, though a little dimwitted. Buster Keaton's acting and directing do him justice.

Charlie Chaplin, on the other hand, always grinned for the camera and went for pure sentimentality. I love his "City Lights" because it is romantic, loud, pure entertainment. He is anything but subtle. His gags are all overdone and drag on and on. Chaplin's character, The Tramp, is a total bum with few redeeming qualities. Chaplin hits the right balancing notes for The Tramp only in "City Lights" with his overly sensitive and noble quest to cure a blind girl that he has fallen for. Chaplin wrote the beautiful vaudeville music himself, or at least hummed it to the composer. The whole movie is flashy but perfect.

Thinking about these two movies, I know I should like "The General" better. I did love it. The gags themselves top anything Chaplin ever did. But for some reason, I keep thinking of what Cosmo Brown told Don Lockwood in "Singin' in the Rain".

You can study Shakespeare and be quite elite
You can charm the critics and have nothing to eat
Just slip on a banana peel, the world's at your feet
Make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh!

Keaton, you're brilliant. Your stoneface, your direction, your instinct for timing would make Orson Welles blush.

Give me banana peels and cheap laughs.