Buster Keaton rides to the rescue in classic Civil War comedy, THE GENERAL
THE GENERAL (Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman, 1926)
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
Saturday, December 7, 5:30
212-505-5181
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org
Buster Keaton’s Civil War-set The General was a box-office failure upon its release in 1926-27, but it is now deservedly recognized as a silent-film classic. Based on William Pittenger’s memoir, The Great Locomotive Chase, the film stars Keaton as Johnnie Gray, a Georgia train man who is rejected by the Confederate army when he tries to enlist to impress his fiancée, Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack). Little does he know that he was turned away because the Confederacy believes he will be more valuable to them as a civilian engineer; meanwhile, Annabelle and her family think he’s a coward, not believing he even tried to sign up to fight in the first place. But when Union spies led by Captain Anderson (Glen Cavender) steal his beloved train, affectionately known as the General — and capture Annabelle in the process — Johnnie steams into action, doing whatever it takes to get his two loves back while also trying the save the South from a sneak attack. Directed by the Great Stone Face with regular collaborator Clyde Bruckman, The General is a thrilling ride chock-full of dangerous stunts that Keaton performed himself, often involving the moving Western & Electric Railroad train. Keaton manages to make the South sympathetic, depicting the North as evil and conniving, while avoiding any political aspects of the war. And in another sly turn, he casts his father, Joe, who appeared in more than a dozen of his films, as a Union general. The riotous romp was entered into the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry in its inaugural year, 1989, alongside such other classics as The Best Years of Our Lives, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Dr. Strangelove, Gone with the Wind, The Grapes of Wrath, High Noon, Modern Times, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, On the Waterfront, Singin’ in the Rain, The Searchers, Sunrise, The Wizard of Oz, and others, which is high praise indeed. The General is screening on December 7 at 5:30 at Anthology Film Archives; at 3:30, Anthology will be showing four of Keaton’s shorts, One Week, Neighbors, The Scarecrow, and The Play House.
We love Jimmy Stewart; we really do. Who doesn’t? But last year we had the audacity to claim that Jim Parsons’s performance as Elwood P. Dowd in the 2012 Broadway revival of 
Lovingly restored five years ago by Janus Films in a new 35mm print, Albert Lamorisse’s The Red Balloon, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, tells the story of a young boy (Pascal Lamorisse, the director’s son) who makes friends with an extraordinary red balloon, which follows him through the streets of Belleville in Paris, waits for him while he is in school, and obeys his every command. But the neighborhood kids are afraid of this stranger and go on a mission to burst the young boy’s bubble. Lamorisse gives life and emotion to the balloon (more than twenty-five thousand were used in the making of the film) in a masterful use of simple special effects well before CGI and other modern technology. The Red Balloon, which also features the splendid music of Maurice Leroux and the fine photography of Edmond Séchan, is kicking off the new series “Film Forum Jr.” on January 6 along with Robert Cannon’s Oscar-winning 1950 animated short Gerald McBoing McBoing (followed by a Gerald McBoing McBoing sound-alike contest) and Claude Berri’s Oscar-winning live-action short Le Poulet. The new Film Forum series will be screening family-friendly movies at 11:00 on Sunday mornings; upcoming programs include Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr., Creature from the Black Lagoon in 3D, the Marx Brothers’ Horse Feathers, and the original Frankenstein and King Kong.
They don’t come much crazier than the madcap 1963 comedy It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. Producer-director Stanley Kramer takes a sharp turn with the wacky film, clearly needing a laugh following his rather serious string of issue pictures: The Defiant Ones, On the Beach, Inherit the Wind, and Judgment at Nuremberg. As he lays dying after a car crash, master thief Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante) tells a group of onlookers that there is $350,000 buried under a “big W” in Santa Rosita State Park. And off they go in search of the prize, willing to do just about anything and everything in order to get their greedy hands on the money. Hot on their trail is police captain T. G. Culpeper (Spencer Tracy), trying to solve one last case before he retires. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World lives up to its title, a mad, mad, mad, mad epic featuring the greatest all-star comedic cast ever assembled, including Sid Caesar, Edie Adams, Mickey Rooney, Buddy Hackett, an absolutely lunatic Jonathan Winters, Terry-Thomas, Phil Silvers, Dick Shawn, Peter Falk, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, and Ethel Merman in addition to cameos by Jerry Lewis, Jack Benny, Joe E. Brown, Howard Da Silva, Andy Devine, Norman Fell, Selma Diamond, Leo Gorcey, Jim Backus, Marvin Kaplan, Stan Freberg, Arnold Stang, Jesse White, Carl Reiner, Don Knotts, Buster Keaton, and the Three Stooges. Basically, you can’t blink during the film’s 161 minutes or you’ll miss someone or some incredibly silly slapstick moment. And the ending is a laugh riot — literally. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is screening December 22 and December 28 as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “See It in 70MM!,” comprising fifteen films being shown in their original 70mm glory, beginning December 21 with Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and continuing through January 1 with such other works as Ron Fricke’s Baraka, John Ford’s Cheyenne Autumn, Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, Basil Dearden’s Khartoum, Richard Brooks’s Lord Jim, and Jacques Tati’s Playtime.
