About

Buster Keaton stars as the hapless Johnnie Gray, a railroad engineer in the American South. His fiancé Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack) is keen to marry a man in uniform and persuades Johnnie to join the Confederate army. Unfortunately, the army value his skills on the railroad over his ability as a soldier and he’s not accepted. However, he soon gets a chance to prove his daring after his fiancé is captured by the Yankees when they steal his beloved train ‘The General’. Keaton spurs into action in hot pursuit of his two loves: the train and his girl. Touted by none other than Orson Welles as “the greatest comedy ever made, the greatest Civil War film ever made and perhaps the greatest film ever made”, The General boasts beautiful cinematography alongside Buster Keaton’s brilliance for comic timing and a playful sense of the absurd.