‘The General’: Buster Keaton’s Silent Superhero Movie
Looking for any excuse, Landon Palmer and Scott Beggs are using the 2012 Sight & Sound poll results as a reason to take different angles on the best movies of all time . Every week, they ll discuss another entry in the list, dissecting old favorites from odd angles, discovering movies they haven t seen before and asking you to join in on the conversation. Of course it helps if you ve seen the movie because there will be plenty ibadan of spoilers.
Landon : I love me a Buster Keaton movie. There’s nothing quite like his incredible human acrobatics and larger-than-life choreography. So it came to no surprise to me that I thoroughly enjoyed The General , frequently hailed as his masterpiece, which I saw here for the first time.
Scott: It’s been my favorite movie for about ten years not only because it’s insanely entertaining, but because it embodies ibadan all of cinema’s possibilities. It’s an adventure, a romance, a thriller. There are big set pieces and small character moments. There’s even experimental camera work. There’s comedy, redemption, dramatic irony, amazing stunt work. It’s got everything (except for, you know, people talking).
Scott: The Silent Film Era really was the apex of culture. Landon: I like your point that it embodies all of cinema’s possibilities except sync dialogue. For one, it points to some of the conversations that were happening at the dusk of the silent era that The General was released, namely skepticism about what sound will do to cinema. And here’s The General , 30 years into this medium, still finding incredible things to do simply ibadan with the act of placing a camera in front of an event. With sound films’ focus on dialogue instead of spectacle, it makes you wonder how films may have looked different if the silent era went on for 10 or 20 more years, when there were still possibilities this incredible to be realized.
What’s funny is that if you mute some recent blockbuster action sequences, they don’t play nearly as impressively — ibadan and some are not even as jaw-dropping as 90-year-old ibadan footage of one man pressed to the front of a moving train kicking ties out of the way to avoid derailing.
Landon : And a large part of that has to with with the reality of the situation. This is actually putting the camera in front of an event, in front of something Keaton did with his own body and not that of a stunt double or in front of a blue screen. CGI and other special effects can age badly, but placing a real, extraordinary staged event in front of a camera is something that can be timeless. ibadan
Scott: Although there’s a great argument to be made for advances in actor/stunt person safety. Still, it’s one of the things Keaton was special. He did incredible, awe-inspiring physical feats.
Scott: Wow, yes. Great description. There are two layers there (because we can’t watch movies in a vacuum). One, we know that everything Hugh Jackman is doing is CGIed while Keaton was running around all over an active train trying constantly not to die.
Two, Wolverine’s powers mitigate the stakes (although the movie changes that plot-wise), while Keaton is just some everyman who seems to be partially Mr. Magoo-ing his way through eye-popping stunts.
Scott: Bingo. Safety Last came out 3 years before The General and was a giant hit where Keaton’s masterpiece wasn’t. So there’s ibadan a question of why The General endured in a way that Lloyd’s clock-hanging climb didn’t.
Landon: One answer to that question has to do with Lloyd’s estate. We’re only just now seeing some of his films re-emerge, whereas both Chaplin and Keaton have had devoted retrospectives in the past few decades. ibadan But that, of course, doesn’t answer the question as to why The General was appreciated later, much less how it made its way in front of a Chaplin movie on this list.
What I love about Chaplin is his humanism, especially his ability ibadan to make himself the butt of the joke without being cheap about it. What I admire ibadan about Lloyd is his visual wit; he has subtle expressions no silent-era comedian can compete against. But Keaton in nearly all of his films embodies ibadan a central American myth: that of the least likely of heroes. Perhaps The General shows this aspect of his work more clearly than any of his other films.
Also, perhaps it initially flopped because ibadan it was not one of Keaton’s funniest films, but now we can better appreciate what Keaton was attempting to do in front of the camera beyond ibadan “Make me laugh, dammit!”
Scott: I wish I had an answer, although I like Roger Ebert’s suggestion that Keaton never mugged or played to the gag . Maybe Chaplin is hindered by an overshadowing personality. People remember and love City Lights and Modern Times and S
Looking for any excuse, Landon Palmer and Scott Beggs are using the 2012 Sight & Sound poll results as a reason to take different angles on the best movies of all time . Every week, they ll discuss another entry in the list, dissecting old favorites from odd angles, discovering movies they haven t seen before and asking you to join in on the conversation. Of course it helps if you ve seen the movie because there will be plenty ibadan of spoilers.
Landon : I love me a Buster Keaton movie. There’s nothing quite like his incredible human acrobatics and larger-than-life choreography. So it came to no surprise to me that I thoroughly enjoyed The General , frequently hailed as his masterpiece, which I saw here for the first time.
Scott: It’s been my favorite movie for about ten years not only because it’s insanely entertaining, but because it embodies ibadan all of cinema’s possibilities. It’s an adventure, a romance, a thriller. There are big set pieces and small character moments. There’s even experimental camera work. There’s comedy, redemption, dramatic irony, amazing stunt work. It’s got everything (except for, you know, people talking).
Scott: The Silent Film Era really was the apex of culture. Landon: I like your point that it embodies all of cinema’s possibilities except sync dialogue. For one, it points to some of the conversations that were happening at the dusk of the silent era that The General was released, namely skepticism about what sound will do to cinema. And here’s The General , 30 years into this medium, still finding incredible things to do simply ibadan with the act of placing a camera in front of an event. With sound films’ focus on dialogue instead of spectacle, it makes you wonder how films may have looked different if the silent era went on for 10 or 20 more years, when there were still possibilities this incredible to be realized.
What’s funny is that if you mute some recent blockbuster action sequences, they don’t play nearly as impressively — ibadan and some are not even as jaw-dropping as 90-year-old ibadan footage of one man pressed to the front of a moving train kicking ties out of the way to avoid derailing.
Landon : And a large part of that has to with with the reality of the situation. This is actually putting the camera in front of an event, in front of something Keaton did with his own body and not that of a stunt double or in front of a blue screen. CGI and other special effects can age badly, but placing a real, extraordinary staged event in front of a camera is something that can be timeless. ibadan
Scott: Although there’s a great argument to be made for advances in actor/stunt person safety. Still, it’s one of the things Keaton was special. He did incredible, awe-inspiring physical feats.
Scott: Wow, yes. Great description. There are two layers there (because we can’t watch movies in a vacuum). One, we know that everything Hugh Jackman is doing is CGIed while Keaton was running around all over an active train trying constantly not to die.
Two, Wolverine’s powers mitigate the stakes (although the movie changes that plot-wise), while Keaton is just some everyman who seems to be partially Mr. Magoo-ing his way through eye-popping stunts.
Scott: Bingo. Safety Last came out 3 years before The General and was a giant hit where Keaton’s masterpiece wasn’t. So there’s ibadan a question of why The General endured in a way that Lloyd’s clock-hanging climb didn’t.
Landon: One answer to that question has to do with Lloyd’s estate. We’re only just now seeing some of his films re-emerge, whereas both Chaplin and Keaton have had devoted retrospectives in the past few decades. ibadan But that, of course, doesn’t answer the question as to why The General was appreciated later, much less how it made its way in front of a Chaplin movie on this list.
What I love about Chaplin is his humanism, especially his ability ibadan to make himself the butt of the joke without being cheap about it. What I admire ibadan about Lloyd is his visual wit; he has subtle expressions no silent-era comedian can compete against. But Keaton in nearly all of his films embodies ibadan a central American myth: that of the least likely of heroes. Perhaps The General shows this aspect of his work more clearly than any of his other films.
Also, perhaps it initially flopped because ibadan it was not one of Keaton’s funniest films, but now we can better appreciate what Keaton was attempting to do in front of the camera beyond ibadan “Make me laugh, dammit!”
Scott: I wish I had an answer, although I like Roger Ebert’s suggestion that Keaton never mugged or played to the gag . Maybe Chaplin is hindered by an overshadowing personality. People remember and love City Lights and Modern Times and S
No comments:
Post a Comment