The General - 1926

“The General” (1926) is a Civil War story remarkable for two interesting qualities. First, it has the intriguing look of a Mathew Brady Civil War-era photograph. Second, the story is entirely apolitical.

Mathew Brady photo: Library of Congress, (now in public domain), Hanover Junction, Pennsylvania, 1863.

As far removed as we are today from the Civil War, and despite our technological proficiencies, we could not achieve either of these qualities in a Civil War film today; nor would we probably try. In the first case, producers might shrug off any attempt to replicate a Mathew Brady photo with the attitude that most younger audiences would neither recognize nor appreciate that effect. Mathew who?

In the second case, we have a self-conscious but determined tendency (as we’ve discussed on this blog before), to justify history (when we’re not over-simplifying it or dumbing it down). Buster Keaton, the film’s star, and one of its writer-directors, avoids explanation or politics by focusing on the story of one stumblebum who tries to retrieve a train engine that has been stolen.

This post is our annual commemoration of Memorial Day with a look at the Civil War through the movies. Memorial Day has its roots in the Civil War. In previous Memorial Day posts we covered “Friendly Persuasion” (1956), and picked apart the symbolism used in “Gone with the Wind” (1939). “The General” has neither message nor sweeping saga, but there is an off-beat realism to the movie that neither “Friendly Persuasion” nor GWTW has.

We might note that 1926, when “The General” was released, was closer to the end of the Civil War than we are today to the end of World War II. That may not be enough in itself to lend authenticity; “Birth of a Nation” (1915) was even closer in proximity to the Civil War, yet has more music hall melodrama about it than a Mathew Brady photo. And director D.W. Griffith’s awkward defensiveness over The Cause resulting in an infamous racist slant on the Southern justification both for the war and the Ku Klux Klan got him in such hot water that perhaps a wish to avoid controversy inspired Buster Keaton’s apolitical telling of an unlikely Confederate hero. Perhaps it only reflected Keaton’s personal lack of interest in anything more than a great gag, a meticulously executed stunt, and above all, trains.

Buster Keaton, a train enthusiast more than a Civil War buff, nevertheless purposely created his calculated “Mathew Brady effect” for historical authenticity.  His longer hair in this film is small but nice touch.  One compromise (or perhaps just an ordinary flaw) is the display in town of the “Confederate” flag of blue crossed bars on a red field, with stars for each Confederate state. As mentioned in last year’s post on GWTW, this flag now commonly referred to as the Confederate flag was not the flag of the Confederacy, and would not have flown over a recruiting office as in this 1861 scene.  General P.G.T. Beauregard, Army of Northern Virginia, sought a different design after the First Battle of Bull Run (or First Manassas) to keep his troops from being the victims of friendly fire, because the actual Confederate flag, commonly called the Stars and Bars, looked very similar to the United States flag.

At times the film’s apolitical nature is too obvious, such as when the war begins. Keaton is spooning with his best girl on the parlor sofa when her brother strides in, and announces, “Fort Sumter has been fired upon.” Her father, seemingly emotionless, replies, “Then the war is here.”

This makes it sound as if they are responding in dull surprise to news of a bad storm destroying crops in another county, an act of God. The Confederates fired upon Fort Sumter purposely to start the war. Some Southerners were pleased, some were anxious, some were certainly baffled and wondering what was going to happen next, but nobody shrugged it off as just one of those things.

There is also the noticeable absence of any discussion of states’ rights or reasons for the war. Toward the beginning of the film, a few African-American actors are shown carrying trunks off a train that has just arrived in town. The camera does not linger on them; they are easy to miss if you’re not watching closely. Keaton seems to have chosen not to show stereotyped slaves -- by not showing slaves at all, nor addressing the issue of slavery. This is how Keaton manages to be apolitical on the two most controversial aspects of the Civil War: that it was started by disgruntled secessionist politicians who wanted to protect their property; and their property was human beings.

On one hand, this seems like a terrific cop-out on Keaton’s part; but his intense concentration on the trains in this movie sweeps away the nefarious causes of the Civil War and the gore of that catastrophe. It isn’t even a case of his ignoring the politicians and generals in favoring a story about the common solider. Keaton’s character isn’t a soldier. He’s a train engineer, and he wears both blue and gray uniforms in the course of the film as disguises in order to guide his engine safely home.  Keaton rigidly sticks to his story, as oblivious to social conflicts around him as his character is oblivious to anything but his beloved train.

The story, based on a true event, is about a unique Civil War train robbery, where Union raiders confiscate a Confederate train. In this movie, Keaton is the engineer of “The General”, which runs on the Western and Atlantic Rail Road in Tennessee and Georgia.

When war is announced, Keaton attempts to enlist in the Confederate army, but is turned away because he is more valuable running the train. A series of misunderstandings, and his girl, played by Marion Mack, thinks he has refused to enlist because he is a coward.

Union spies capture his train, with Keaton in pursuit (on a hand cart, on an early wooden bicycle, and running like crazy). At this point, Keaton is unaware that Marion Mack, who was in the baggage car searching for something in her trunk, was captured by the Union men, who tie her up.

At first Marion Mack is the damsel in distress. Later on in the film she gets some unexpected slapstick moments, is hoisted around in a sack, shows her comedy chops, and even runs the train. She gets pummeled with water from the water tower spout, and in a PBS documentary on Buster Keaton shown some years ago, “Buster Keaton - A Hard Act to Follow”, she acknowledged that she had no idea she was about to be half drowned in that scene.

A funny bit occurs when Keaton directs her to feed with boiler with wood as he drives the train. She picks up the smallest, most dainty pieces, and he sarcastically hands her a sliver of wood, which she quite seriously throws on the fire. He is so exasperated with her at one point, his hands make as though to choke her, but after a shake or two, he kisses her instead.

Another laugh is when Keaton, unable to avoid getting out of a way of a cannon pointed at him, heaves a chunk of firewood at it, as if it were a dog he could chase away.

Despite Keaton’s deserved reputation for being one of the funniest comedians in silent films, this movie is not strictly a comedy. It’s really more of an adventure tale, told in constant motion. The camera following the train is in many scenes on another train running parallel. Keaton’s formidable athleticism is astounding. He runs and climbs all over the train, scrambling over the wood pile, crawling on the cow catcher. Other cast members, including Marion Mack, also clamber all over the moving train.

Just the scene where he sits on the crossbar of the train wheels and gets lifted up and down with the train movement had to be risky.

His gags are amazing for their complexity and precision. When the Union spies in “The General” chuck railroad ties at the train engine which Keaton uses to pursue them, he lies down on the cow catcher, and with a heavy railroad tie in his hands, slams it down to knock another wooden railroad tie off the track with an elementary lesson in physics. The train is still moving while he does it.

The timing of firing the railroad car cannon, first a comic dud, and then a success, was perfect, all while the trains are moving.

The most spectacular effect was, of course, the train wreck on the wooden bridge across the wide gorge. Keaton’s crew built the bridge, and then in a single shot -- it could not have been done twice -- the train engine and wood car are driven to the center, and Buster lights a fire on the wooden bridge to scuttle it before the Union men hot on his tail can use it. The fire starts before he is ready, and he must jump through flames to escape, accidently jumping through a gap in the bridge and plunging to the creek below. The fire engulfs the bridge, and the train collapses into the gorge.

In the PBS documentary on Keaton’s career mentioned above, an eyewitness to the event remarked that the silent stream of steam we see billowing out of the wrecked train was not silent at all. The train’s steam whistle let off a long, continuous shrill blast that sounded ominous and frightening to the spectators. Too bad that sound was not replicated for the movie. Some, horrified, also mistook the dummy planted at the controls for a real person.

After the train wreck there is a brief battle between the blue and gray, who finally catch up to each other. These fellows were played by Oregon National Guardsmen, changing uniforms to be both the Union and Confederate soldiers.

“The General” received mixed reviews when it was released, and some reviewers seemed to find fault with it mainly because it wasn’t what they were expecting: more than just a comedy, but less than a Civil War epic. In both the study of history, and our perception of movies, we are often guilty of clinging to preconceived notions. It was reportedly Keaton’s favorite film and the one of which he was most proud.

When a Confederate soldiers falls in battle while a confused and annoyed Keaton is talking to him, and when a Union soldier dies when Keaton’s sword accidently slips out of his hand and is driven into the soldier’s back, we are shown these events as gags. Maybe that’s what some critics had trouble swallowing. Depictions of historical events, especially in this manner, are going to seem callous, like treading upon hallowed ground. But interestingly, Keaton, both director and character, is determined to take only his train and his lady love seriously. Nothing else is of much significance. Despite its Mathew Brady look, the film’s tone seems quite modern in this respect, with wry, dry humor, at times almost cynical.  This is where he really departs from D. W. Griffith's sentimentality.

When he rescues the “Confederate flag” from a fallen flag bearer, he looks like a hero for only a brief moment. Then he gets jostled and knocked on his rear end. He’s no hero, he seems to be saying. He’s just a guy trying to belong somewhere. It’s still easy to get knocked on your rear end even if you’re trying to tread carefully over hallowed ground.

The Birth of a Nation (1915) - Part 2

The story of the Northern Stoneman family and the Southern Cameron family is played out over many years. A lot happens in the film: a war, the struggles of courtship, the power struggles of Mr. Stoneman, who, not so distressed by the loss of President Lincoln, uses the rise of freed slaves as a platform for his own political ambitions. Lincoln is treated respectfully in this film, but probably had to be for by 1915, President Lincoln had become an icon of virtue to the North if not the whole country, and presenting him in any less light than angelic would have been too much controversy for Griffith to withstand. Lincoln was no such icon of virtue to the North or South during the Civil War, but then, it sometimes serves filmmakers not to be too accurate.

The main focus of the controversy is the glorification of the Ku Klux Klan as a virtuous home army defending downtrodden whites from the anarchy of black rule. While most of the Negro extras in the film are played by African-Americans, the principal black characters are played by white actors in blackface. This turns these characters into broad caricature. Insulting, yes, but looking back with 21st Century eyes, it is also ridiculous to the point of wondering how anybody in his right mind could have swallowed this foolishness, and why a seemingly intelligent man like Griffith could have thought it artistic or accurate.

One might just as well wonder why Don Imus would make those ignorant remarks against the Rutgers women’s basketball team, now in the 21st Century, in an attempt at humor by using the same techniques of condescension and caricature. Because some people do find truth in innuendo, swallowing it with a smirk, even now. Some even believe caricature.

When both the Northern Stonemans and Southern Camerons unite to defeat the marauding blacks, and the white actor in official Hollywood mulatto makeup who has made improper advances to Lillian Gish of all people (gasp!), they are said to be joining together in “common defense of their Aryan birthright.” Chilling connotations to be sure, but Adolf Hitler, then a corporal in the Kaiser’s army when this film was released, would have swallowed it and even rejoiced. His country would lose a war, too, and they would find scapegoats, too.

Griffith gives us what he believes is a happy ending, when the blacks are defeated and denied the right to vote, the Stonemans and Camerons are united in the double marriage ceremony among sons and daughters, and younger daughter Flora Cameron, played with spirit by Mae Marsh, preserves the virtue of her Southern womanhood by leaping off a cliff to her death rather than submit to that old fate worse than death at the hands of a white actor in blackface pursuing her for marriage. Stunned was Mr. Griffith when his audiences, just like the Confederate States of America, rebelled. Stunned, too, supposedly, was Mr. Imus when the public rebelled. Condescension and caricature work only up to a point. Then, you must make legitimate the reasoning behind your prejudice. Most often, it can’t be done.

That's all for this week. See you Monday.

The Birth of a Nation (1915) - Part 1

Director D. W. Griffith was astonished to find himself called a racist upon the release of his landmark film, “The Birth of a Nation.” This in itself gives us a lot of information about the director, about the film, and the time in which it was made. Griffith was to discover something else, that the use of condescension and caricature are effective ways to make a point, and conversely, excellent ways of drawing controversy upon oneself.

Mentioning the film evokes all the controversy which surrounds it, overshadowing the Griffith’s truly groundbreaking techniques in cinema, the work of lead actress Lillian Gish who was one of the finest actresses of the silent era, and some interesting historical tableaus, including Lee’s surrender at Appomattox (that’s Donald Crisp as Ulysses S. Grant), some technically accurate battle scenes, and a very dramatic re-creation of Lincoln’s assassination at Ford’s Theater.

The title, which Griffith chose over “The Clansman,” the novel on which the film is based, is an apt one. The Civil War, in many respects, did signal a re-birth of the United States, changed it forever, and fixed two errors of the Declaration of Independence that had eluded politicians for decades. These were the political sovereignty of independent states, and slavery. Both had to go for the nation to become what it always said it was, free, and united. That it took a war for that to happen is the real shame of the Civil War.

Mr. Griffith tries to make war the big evil which threatens mankind, but his story of defeated white Southerners under the heel of monstrous black masters who want to marry all the white women is a look into Griffith’s psyche more than it ever was a treatise on war or an accurate representation of Reconstruction. Like the way a handwriting expert can determine psychological characteristics, Griffith’s film tells us more about Griffith than about his characters. Mr. Griffith was a Southerner who was raised in the aftermath of the Reconstruction days, spoon fed on the stories of despair and destruction in those difficult times. Unfortunately, his attempt at legitimizing the real suffering of Southerners in those days turns their hard times into a mere cartoon.

Any historical film is just as much about the times in which it was made as about the times it is supposed to illustrate. TV westerns made in the 1950s and 1960s carry more a flavor of the 1950s and 1960s about them than the 1870s, and so it is with any look into the past made today. We are not so sophisticated that we have found a way to be accurate, and at the same time not a traitor to the sensibilities of our own times. It is almost impossible. We leave our own imprint.

So, “The Birth of a Nation” is really more about 1915, about Griffith and a modern South still rationalizing past failures, and about the United States still struggling to be “traditional,” on guard against suspicious modern influences and trends. The film sparked controversy the moment it was released, and was protested against and banned in several cities, but still grossed more money than any film for decades, largely because controversy attracts us.

More on "The Birth of a Nation" tomorrow.