Poorly recieved?

I've read a couple of contemporary reviews of The General, both written by major critics of the day and both negative. The New York Times' critic Mordaunt Hall dismissed the film, basically saying that it wasn't as good as Buster's earlier features and questioning his taste in making comedy out of the Civil War. The passage of time has shown that Mordaunt Hall was wrong more often than right in most of his thinking, but the big surprise is the pan the film received from Robert E. Sherwood, a critic who was normally very supportive of Buster's work. (Sherwood went on to be a playwright himself, and later a speech writer for Franklin D. Roosevelt.) Anyway, Sherwood didn't like The General and also thought it was in questionable taste, although he had no problem with war comedies in a general sense, and liked Harold Lloyd's Grandma's Boy and Raymond Griffith's Hands Up!, both of which were set during the Civil War.

I think these critics were asking the wrong questions: how funny is The General? Is it as funny as Keaton's earlier films? Anyone would have to agree that Buster had made other movies with more gags, more belly-laughs, than The General provided, but critics and audiences of the time seemed to miss the film's other obvious merits. And I think it's worth pointing out that Grandma's Boy and Hands Up! both treated the war in a joke-y manner, while Buster took the war itself quite seriously and was aiming higher with his film.

Anyhow, The General didn't do well at the box office. It was too special, I guess, more of an epic than a gag-packed laff riot. It's appalling to learn that the worst talkies Buster made later on at MGM, lousy stuff like Sidewalks of New York and What! No Beer? made more money than The General. Give the people what they want, I guess . . .