The General -Eclectic Cinema

As previously mentioned, I was looking forward to seeing Buster Keaton's The General (1926) after screening Chaplin's Modern Times as part of the Eclectic Cinema season, at Cheltenham Playhouse. So tonight I went along for Keaton's classic, and although I didn't fall in love with it in the same way as Modern Times, I did like it very much. At its release, it was a hugely expensive film, and it shows. It is a hugely fine looking film, with alot of the action taking place on moving trains on the railway, which is inherently cinematic. The stunts are very impressive (as you may expect from Buster Keaton) and the film's scale is huge, you could almost call it an epic. As with Chaplin, I have seen two of the earlier Buster Keaton shorts; Sherlock Jnr and the great Our Hospitality, and I will pick up anything else of his if I come across them on my charity shop hunts.