THE GENERAL
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
This recommendation, like the one immediately following, is for every TVWW reader – but, in particular, should be of special interest to any readers who also happen to have signed up to be students in my Fall 2020 Film Appreciation I class at Rowan University. That’s because one of the people we’ll be studying in that class is comic actor and filmmaker Buster Keaton, and TCM is saluting Keaton tonight in prime time by showing his comic masterpiece The General, followed by a biographical documentary. The General, released in 1927, is a full-blown Civil War epic made the same year The Jazz Singer triggered the transition from silent cinema to sound. The General, without dialogue, manages to tell a complicated and exciting adventure story – in which Keaton plays a train engineer who sets out to follow and reclaim his locomotive, which had been stolen by Union troops – and a touching character study as well. And some of Keaton’s stunts are amazing, like the one with him balanced on the train’s cowcatcher, holding a heavy railroad tie and aiming to throw it like a javelin to remove another tie from the tracks ahead. Don’t try this at home. And speaking of at home, if the fall classes are taught entirely online, watching The General now not only will be giving you a head start, but will be giving you almost the exact same experience. And just for fun, here’s one fill-in-the-blank question likely to be on the midterm: “In Buster Keaton’s 1927 silent classic, The General in the title referred to ________________.” No cheating…