Buster Keaton's silent masterpiece endures almost 90 years later as one of the best slapstick comedies ever made. Sight gags, physical pratfalls and stunt-work that still looks incredibly dangerous today all combine with the actor's signature deadpan expressions and visual inventiveness to create a timeless comedy that doesn't need sound to entertain. When filming the iconic locomotive chase, Keaton instructed the camera to only stop shooting when he yelled cut, or was killed. Such dedication is admirable as the sequence shows the comedian at his best, risking life and limb to deliver a standout set-piece of such vivid imagination, carried by the actor's fluid physicality. As a comedy/action/adventure hybrid from the silent era, The General was both groundbreaking and massively ambitious, with the legendary Buster Keaton at the top of his game. At the time, the movie's $750,000 budget made it an expensive project, and The General failed to recoup a significant profit. Sadly, this led to Keaton signing a studio deal with MGM that would greatly limit his creativity but The General remains his magnum opus, and a showcase for perhaps the greatest physical comedian in Hollywood history.
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