Interesting Article on 'The General'...

Your quest to see all of those acclaimed movies is admirable.

I must take exception with your faulting Keaton for making his character a Southerner. He is not fighting for slavery, he's fighting to get his beloved locomotive back, and coincidentally, for the hand of his girl. That's it. Johnny's focus is that narrow, he isn't concerned with any picture bigger than that. It's that type of focus that is at the heart of Keaton's screen persona. In Steamboat Bill, Jr. an entire building facade can fall all around him unaware because his focus was elsewhere. In The General the entire boxcar gag (first it's there, then it's not) is dependent upon his focus. He can be oblvious to catastrophes all around him, because he is concentrating on one small thing. That's Buster Keaton.

Furthermore, when he read the account of the Andrews Raid, the real-life Civil War mission which inspired Keaton's movie, it was obvious to him that the only character for him would have been the one whose train is stolen (actually a composite of the conductor and engineer). The dogged determination of that conductor, William Fuller, obviously fit Keaton's persona best, and though he took many liberties with the story, it is to his credit that he retained the original battle lines. When asked why he chose to play a Southerner, he responded by saying (and I'm paraphrasing greatly here) that we all know the North won, and often (at the time) movies from the Northern point of view were harsh on the South, and it is hard to extract sympathy for people we already know won the war. Disney told the story later from the Northern viewpoint, The Great Locomotive Chase, and while it is considerably more accurate, is not as successful artistically as Buster's version. In fact, neither movie was particularly successful with audiences.

I suppose it's impossible to view any movie without superimposing modern sensibilities, but while that may be unavoidable, it is recommended that efforts be made to contextualize the era in which a movie is made, as well in this case, the particular historical episode it depicts. Some of your misgivings might have been mitigated and you could have enjoyed the film better, with less modern baggage cluttering the issue.

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