Roger Ebert Called This Classic Comedy Streaming On Prime Video A 'Masterpiece'

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In the 1980s, Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel wrested the United States' "film critics of record" title from Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris. They became television stars via the PBS-aired "Sneak Previews," and their influence ballooned when they became nationally syndicated with their binary thumbs up/down rating system. It was strange for two Chicago-based critics to achieve national prominence, but their badinage was an acerbic joy to behold — especially when it appeared they were about to come to actual blows over a formulaic piece of studio pap like "Cop and a Half."

There were several drawbacks to the Siskel-Ebert shtick (expertly addressed in Matt Singer's indispensable "Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever"), but it was particularly lamentable that they were so tightly tethered to the now. Unless an old film got a major re-release, they rarely got to hold forth on the classics. They did eventually carve out time for notable video releases of older films, but I really wanted to hear what they thought of vintage screwball comedies, cold-around-the-heart noirs, or pioneering silents.

The internet has brought us much misery over the last thirty years, but in the nascent 1990s days of the World Wide Web, it gave people in podunk towns unfettered access to newspapers from around the world. And when I realized I could read Roger Ebert's latest reviews every week, I was elated. No legacy media member embraced this medium more enthusiastically than Ebert. He was already prolific, but his writing output exploded in this moment. He was suddenly free to write about his favorite movies, and he was never more eloquent than when he published a four-star rave for Buster Keaton's silent, expensive movie "The General," calling it a "masterpiece."

Charlie Chaplin has long been hailed as the master of silent comedy, and that's a totally reasonable position! But the first time I saw Buster Keaton's "The General," my allegiance was forever pledged to the Great Stone Face. And while Keaton's measured expressiveness was a departure from his contemporaries (which also included the great Harold Lloyd), Ebert, in his 1997 review of quite possibly the greatest comedy ever made, correctly pushed back on the star's nickname. "Buster Keaton was not the Great Stone Face so much as a man who kept his composure in the center of chaos," wrote Ebert.

Movies don't get more chaotic than "The General." Set during the United States Civil War, Keaton's 1926 film centers on the romantic misfortunes of Johnnie Gray, a Southern train engineer who loses the affections of his true love, Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack), when he cannot enlist in the Confederate Army (problematic, yes, but the conflict is basically window dressing). He gets the chance to redeem himself when the Union soldiers hijack the titular train and kidnap Annabelle in the process. From this point forward, it's one extended train chase.

How do you generate excitement and laughs from vehicles stuck on a fixed track? Per Ebert:

"It would seem logically difficult to have much of a chase involving trains, since they must remain on tracks, and so one must forever be behind the other one — right? Keaton defies logic with one ingenious silent comic sequence after another, and it is important to note that he never used a double and did all of his own stunts, even very dangerous ones, with a calm acrobatic grace."

Action superstar Jackie Chan drew great inspiration from Keaton. You derive the same daredevil thrill from "Police Story" and "Project A" that you get from "The General" and "Our Hospitality" (another train yarn from Keaton that I might actually prefer to the former). This is why, as Ebert notes in his review, Keaton's films have generally aged much better than Chaplin's (though "The Great Dictator" is sadly relevant as we deal with a rising tide of global fascism that echoes the same events that inspired Chaplin's masterpiece). Like Ebert, I will forever be in awe of the sequence where Keaton, stuck on the cowcatcher of a speeding train, prevents a derailment by throwing a railroad tie to dislodge another one placed in its path.

"The General" is a model of "and then" storytelling. How long can you stretch out a set piece, with one unexpected obstacle piling up after another, before achieving narrative orgasm? No one has ever done it better than Keaton, and I'm so happy I got to read Ebert's thoughts at length on such an essential classic. If you've never seen "The General," you're in for a treat: It's streaming on Prime Video now. And then you've got "Sherlock Jr.," "The Cameraman," and "Seven Chances" (where you get to see Keaton nearly getting flattened by boulders), among others, waiting for you.