After just seeing a movie that I feel doesn't deserve it's spot on the Sight and Sound list, here's one that definatley does. It's Buster Keaton's best film, the best Civil War film, and surely is one of the most perfect movies ever made.
The film is based on William Pittenger's The Great Locomotive Chase, a nonfiction account of a real event during the Civil War (which Keaton, being illiterate, never read). Keaton stars as Johnnie Gray, a southern train engineer who is rejected from enlisting in the Confederate Army because he is considered to be more valuble on the railroad. This does not impress his girlfriend Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack) who refuses to see him until he is in uniform. A year later, a Union plot is hatched to still Johnnie's train and use it to destroy supply lines and launch a secret attack on Confederate forces. After the General is stolen, Johnnie follows in another train. What follows is one of the great technical acheivement in all of cinema...
When it was released in 1927, The General was trashed by critics and ended up a huge finincial failure (it was one of the most expensive movies ever made up until that point). One of the few papers that gave the movie a positive review recieved angry letters to the editor from people who had walked out. As pointed out by Marion Meade in her excellent biography of Keaton, the reason for the failure was that audinces were expecting another Keaton comedy and were surprised at the movie's other elements. Although moments of the movie are very funny, the movie is also an exciting action/adventure film, as well as gorgeous recreation of a time gone by. The adventure elements are truly suspensful and it shows just how talented an actor and director Keaton was- had he been able to continue as an autunmous filmmaker, who knows what else he might have given us.
The movie is also beautiful in its formal construction- both its symmetrical structure and its cinematography (filmed in Oregon) is breathtaking. The stunts are nail-biting (Keaton was knocked unconcious during one that went went wrong). The movie is also completly apolitical, meaing that it doesn't come off as racist, unlike some other Civil War films of the time.
In the end, you have a movie that is hilarious, moving, exciting, suspensful and beautiful. This is as close to movies come to being perfection.
The General (1927)