Amazon.com Essentials:
Buster Keaton's career reached its creative apex with this
rousing comic adventure. Not merely one of the finest silent films,
this remains one of the great film comedies of all time. The Great
Stone Face stars as Southern railroad engineer Johnny Gray, a man with
only two loves: the sweet Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack) and his
trustworthy engine, the eponymous General. When Fort Sumner is fired
upon he's one of the first to enlist, but when the war office rejects
him (he's too valuable as a trained engineer) his sweetie rejects him
as a coward. Johnny has the opportunity to prove his bravery when
Yankee spies steal his engine and inadvertently kidnap Annabelle, and
Johnny pursues with all the resources at his disposal: handcar,
bicycle, and finally railroad engine. Keaton's love/hate relationship
with technology and machinery shines as he becomes one with his
beloved locomotive and wrestles with a finicky cannon that threatens
to blow his engine off the tracks; with tremendous dexterity, he nails
the humor with inimitably deadpan takes. Spunky Marion Mack makes a
perfect partner for Keaton, not merely a foil but a gifted comedienne
in her own right. Other Keaton films contain more laughs and inspired
comic stunts, but none combines romance, adventure, and comedy into a
solid story as seamlessly as this silent masterpiece. --Sean
Axmaker
Amazon.com video review:
Buster Keaton was arguably the cinema's first modernist, an old-fashioned romantic with a 20th-century mind behind a deadpan visage. His films
brim with some of the most breathtaking stunts and ingenious gags ever put on
film, all perfectly engineered to look effortless. And, as Kino's magnificent
11-disc box set The Art of Buster Keaton conclusively shows, they are
among the funniest ever made. Keaton warped gags until they left the plane of
reality in such shorts as The Playhouse (1921) and The Frozen
North (1922), and takes a logic-defying leap into the very nature of cinema
itself in his hilarious Sherlock Jr. (1924). He takes on the mechanical
world with Rube Golberg ingenuity in The Navigator (1924) and perfects
his match between man and massive machine in Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928),
which features the funniest hurricane scene ever put to film, and The
General (1927), one of the greatest comedies of all time.
In addition to the previously released 11 features and 19 shorts from the peak
of Keaton's career, this set boasts the exclusive Keaton Plus, a
collection of rarities and tributes. The greatest find is the long-lost ending
to Hard Luck (1921), now restored to complete the film's final inspired
gag. Other highlights include newly discovered scenes from Daydreams
(1922) and The Love Nest (1923), entertaining excerpts from Keaton's 1951
TV show Life with Buster Keaton (he's still got it!), and his rare
dramatic turn in the 1954 television play The Awakening. --Sean
Axmaker
