🚂🍿 The General

A railway engineer in the American Civil War has two loves, his locomotive and a girl called Annabelle. Spies steal the first with the second on board, and he goes after both, alone, on foot, on a handcar, on a bicycle and finally on another engine. Then he has to bring it all back the way he came.

Sunday matinee at 🪩 The Tannery Cinema with Jonas Reuter, first film of the year, about forty people and a radiator that ticked through the quiet parts.

Jonas says it is a film about trains. I say it is a film about logistics: one track, two engines, a fixed amount of firewood, and every joke is a scheduling problem. The pursuit north and the pursuit south are the same route run in opposite directions, so each obstacle he clears on the way out comes back as one he can use on the way home. That is a return leg planned properly, which I see about twice a year at work.

• Keaton does the stunts himself and never asks to be admired for it. He sits on the coupling rod of a moving engine looking mildly disappointed.
• The cannon on the flat wagon is a perfect small disaster: the plan is fine, the track curves.
• The bridge scene used a real locomotive and a real bridge. You can tell, because nothing about it is tidy.

We argued about trains versus logistics all the way to the tram stop. He drew the track layout on the back of the ticket, to scale, and lost.

• The recruiting office: turned away because he is worth more driving an engine, and nobody thinks to tell him so.
• The coupling rod. He sits down on it to be miserable and the engine carries him off, up and down, into the shed.
• The sleeper on the track: riding the front of the engine, he knocks one loose timber off the rails with another. One take, no trick.
• The cannon, loaded, aimed and then pointed straight at him by a bend in the line.
• Under the table at the enemy headquarters, hearing the whole plan because he came in out of the rain.
• The bridge. A real engine goes into a real river.
• The sword in the last battle, whose blade leaves the handle every time he draws it.