Plot summary (with spoilers): The Little Tramp is a train conductor this time, in the Deep South. He rides into the station in Murrieta, Georgia, and--wait a minute. That's not the Little Tramp. That's some other dude. Hey there, other dude! His name is Johnnie and
There were two loves of his life...
his train...and---
Cut to the picture your aunt has of your unsmiling great-grandmother in that weird pose.
The love of Johnnie's life is Annabelle Lee. He goes to visit her one day, and discovers her father and brother are talking. The War or Northern Aggression has broken out. Annabelle's brother and father head to town to enlist. After some passive-aggressive questioning from Annabelle, Johnnie follows them. Johnnie tells the recruiter his name and occupation and the recruiter's superior tells him to reject Johnnie because his services as an engineer are too valuable. Johnnie tries to get in line again and pretend to be someone else, but this doesn't work. He leaves, dejected. He tells Annabelle they wouldn't enlist, but she doesn't believe him. She says she doesn't want to see him again unless it's in a uniform.
One Year Later
The war rages on. Several Union spies have infiltrated the Confederate Army. They plan to commandeer Johnnie's train, The General, and take it back to Union territory where it will help them win the war or something, because the Union has no trains. Annabelle learns her father was wounded and gets on The General to ride it to her father. At a certain stop, Johnnie and the rest of the crew get out to have lunch, and the Union spies jump on the train and kick everybody off (except Annabelle) and start barreling down the track. So then there's a long sequence where Johnnie first chases the train on foot, then on that little see-saw thingie from cartoons that moves along the track, then one of those bikes with the giant wheel in the front and a tiny wheel in the back (seriously, Olden Times, what the fuck were those about?) then he gets ahold of another train and chases in earnest. The men put various shit on the track to stop Johnnie, but he manages to crawl down to the front of the train and move shit just in time in various pretty damn spectacular ways. Like, he moves on long piece of wood and uses it to chuck it at another long piece of wood, knocking them both off the track just seconds before the train hits it. Then he tries to shoot a cannon at the other train, but accidentally knocks it so it shoots straight forward instead of up. But the track happens to be curving right at the right moment, so it misses Johnnie and hits right behind the other train instead. That didn't make sense, did it? Oh, just watch it. It's pretty cool. Meanwhile, Johnnie has to keep shoveling wood into the furnace to keep the train going. Then, something weird happens. For the first time in a silent movie, I laugh out loud. Buster Keaton is so much better at this shit, you guys.
So Johnnie keeps chasing and chasing and it eventually goes on a bit too long, though it's mostly fun. But finally, Johnnie realizes he's chased the men all the way into Union territory. He jumps off the train when he sees that the men are no longer running from him, but rather pursing on horses, with reinforcements. He hides out in the rain, and finally breaks into a house where he sees food on the table. Some Union soldiers enter the room just then and begin discussing their secret plans while Johnnie hides under the table. They say they're going to take The General back down South in disguise and then launch an all-out surprise attack on something something Confederate Stronghold. They also discuss how they've got a female Confederate prisoner in the next room, who was stowed away on the train. This is quite fortuitous.
So of course, Johnnie breaks her out and they sleep in the dirt and rain and the next morning Johnnie puts Annabelle in a burlap sack and loads her onto the General, and then attacks the Union soldiers, knocking them off the train, and then rides off. The soldiers pursue. Then there's another half hour of more madcap train shenanigans, this time with Johnnie running away and the Union giving chase. Much of the same shit goes down, except in reverse. And also Annabelle tries to help and continually fucks up, at one point starting a fire and at another accidentally ditching Johnnie on the tracks, because she is just a girl. This is less exciting the second time around, and seems to go on much longer. But eventually, they set fire to a bridge to prevent the Union guys from chasing them and they reach the Confederate troops and tell them of the sneak attack. The troops mobilize and go in for the attack and Johnnie joins them and trips over his sword and pratfalls and blah this is getting tiresome.
The Union men reach the bridge which is on fire, and the General tells them the fire hasn't sufficiently damaged the bridge and they can still cross it. The train goes along the tracks over the bridge and--the entire thing collapses and the train goes into the water about fifty feet below. And it's real. Not models. Not CGI. A real train on a real bridge goes boom and it is awesome. The Confederate men show up and make quick work of the surviving Union soldiers.
And slavery lives on for yet another day. HURRAY!
Johnnie waves the Confederate flag proudly and wears his Ron Paul '12 button and is finally allowed to enlist as a Lieutenant. The recruiter asks him his occupation and Johnnie proudly stands up tall and says,
Solider.
Nothing left to do but wait for Sherman to come and burn everything to the ground. (Spoiler).
Review: Maybe before there were Star Trek people and Star Wars people and Beatles people and Elvis people, there were Buster people and Charlie people. If so, count me in Buster's lot. He's far and away more talented and just flat-out funnier. He's just as gifted physically, but the slapstick is more...I wanna say "organic", but that's not quite it. It's more...plausible, I guess. Johnnie never just spazzed out randomly. He got himself into trouble and had to do bizarre/funny physical things to accomplish goals that advanced the plot. Charlie Chaplin just acts like a freak for no reason. Also, the "stone-face" of Keaton is just naturally funny, and more surreal, which is what you want in a silent movie. I was also impressed by how well all the action "tracked", meaning Johnnie would do X which would effect Y and cause Z and we could watch it all go down in real time, no CGI, no tricks. It reminded me of the Goofy cartoons, where Goofy would get involved in all sorts of complicated Rube Goldberg type slapstick situations that were really quite ingeniously plotted out. Similar to Wile E Coyote's adventures. But it's all the more impressive here because it's live action. That said, there was still a lot of extraneous, boring shit here. And a lot of redundant stuff, and at least 30 minutes of filler. Also, I realize it was 1926, but a story about a heroic Confederate solider? Really? I gotta wonder how that played north of the Mason-Dixon. But I still liked it enough to give it a mild thumbs up, were I Siskel or Ebert or the Other Guy. For my money though, my favorite silent movie on this list is still Sunrise.
Stars: Three out of five.
Next, "The Graduate" and then another gay-fave that I will hopefully love enough to get me my membership back, "Sunset Boulevard".
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