Buster Keaton’s The General (1926)

Editor's note: The following conversation was overheard outside of a dim classroom in the hallowed halls of St. Paul Film Academy, where some ongoing discussion of movie lore continues without concern for time or grades.

Alec: Buster Keaton, or Busta Keaton as he is known amongst the more urban crowds …

Findlay: Wait, wait. No one called him that. What urban crowds? Are you suggesting inner city folks are abandoning the clubs and stuff for standing-room-only celebrations of Buster Keaton? The guy who made his first movie in 1917? How would anybody know him?

Alex: Hey, he made himself famous through the silent comedy genre.

Findlay: Dude! You make it sound like he chose that type of film out of variety pack. ‘Hmmmm. Should I go with Low-Budget Zombie or Post-Apocalyptic Drama? Nah, I’ll make Silent Comedy.’ Keaton started in silent films because that’s all there was! What else have you got?

Alec: His main competitors were Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin. He’s not as famous as the other two …

Findlay: … except amongst the urban crowds.

Alec: Uh, yeah. But his works are equally entertaining. He got his start in the entertainment business through vaudeville. By the time he started working on movies he was already well known. You can see his vaudevillian beginnings in his movies.

Findlay: So what can we expect from tonight’s movie, arguably Keaton’s best work, The General?

Alec: Well, I haven’t seen The General.

Findlay: Dude, again! You’re the host!

Alec: But I have seen One Week. I really enjoyed the basic “Romeo and Juliet” plotline. The movie required minimal thinking and maximum laughing. These old school comedies have this exceedingly simple plot and humor but they are somehow able to entertain.

Findlay: Sounds like my English classes. But why is that funny?

Alec: Well, watching silent comedy, sometimes I think “that guy just fell down in some kind of fast motion, why is this funny?” and then he falls down again and I start laughing again. They have this ridiculous quality and although they are simple they are easily able to entertain me.

Findlay: Well, you know what they say about simple pleasures.

Alec: Not really. I know as a member of film club I am supposed to be someone who enjoys intensely thematic and philosophical movies. I can enjoy that kind of movie if they are well done but I also enjoy the simplicity of one man beating the other with a cane and knocking him down.

Findlay: I am totally hiding my Three Stooges collection from you.

Alec: I guess you could call these silent comedies the junk food of the movie world but that really would not be doing them justice. Although they may not require thought or thematic conclusions they are good movies (which cannot be said for most comedies these days).

Findlay: You’re so right. But if silent comedy is “junk food,” what the heck are Adam Sandler comedies? The paste you eat when you’re in kindergarten? I think we should look at silent film in general as a completely different form. The problem is we don’t have a lot of understanding left of the conventions of silent film, the way we do with superhero movies or romantic comedies. How do we watch these movies if their real qualities are on display but we don’t know how to see them?

Alec: Well, at the most basic, they have historical value as far as film goes. But they are also at the beginning of the film comedy genre, the “city on the hill” of film comedies. You can even see traces of these movies in pop culture today whether it be mimicking them or mocking them. In fact the common comedy technique known as slapstick found somewhat of a start here. Your favorite comedies of today would be far different without this awesome genre as a launching pad.

Findlay: Whoa! You’re getting all intensely thematic and philosophical.

Alec: I’m a true fan. Especially of Keaton. I truly enjoy his movies and those who do not give him a chance because he is from the black and white silent genre are insane. Any movie has the potential to be entertaining (yes even Jim Carry movies). People should not avoid silent or black and white films because they think of them as “boring.” People have complained to me that film club is “showing too many old movies this year.” Watching these older films will allow you to appreciate and understand new movies.

Findlay: You said it, Busta!

Alec Nordin (Film Club Co-President) and R. Findlay (Film Club Adviser)

Jamie Uys’s The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980)

Jamie Uys’s The Gods Must Be Crazy opens in anthropological documentary format, with a voice-over narrating the commonalities of daily life in the Kalahari desert. But it is important to remember you are watching a work of fiction. And a sly one at that.

In many ways, we can see The Gods Must Be Crazy as an allegory, a figurative form of storytelling in which we look past the literal to the figurative. Critics complain that even when the film was made in 1980, innocent groups of Bushmen no longer existed, as the modern world had encroached on and changed their nomadic, hunter/gatherer society in significant ways, but they’re missing the point, possibly because of the faux-documentary style of the beginning. The point is to establish a group of characters whose existence is defined by complete innocence – they have no sense of evil, no superfluous elements in their lives, nothing that seems without purpose, no conflict. It is an Edenic existence, and therefore resistant to literal readings.

Uys clearly wants to contrast this innocence with the “civilized” world, and he does so for satiric purposes. Keep your eyes open for deadpan sarcastic contrasts between the language describing what you see and what is actually going on.

The movie really gets going when the two civilizations collide, and the collision comes in the form of a Coke bottle. Again, in an allegorical way, the bottle represents not only the “civilized” world from which it comes, but the evil that results from that object’s incursion into the Bushmen’s society. It could also represent the absurdity of consumerism. Or it could be technological advancement; the scene in which the Bushmen find inventive uses for the bottle is incredible. Or it could represent the apocalypse (we just had to throw that in). As we recognize the many different interpretations one can take of this Coke bottle, it becomes obvious that Uys is using it more symbolically than literally.

So there’s lots to think about here, but that’s just one aspect of this remarkable little film. We hope you’ll enjoy its gentle comedy, while not missing its biting satire. And that you’ll take pleasure in its style, which shifts throughout the film. Uys used actual Bushmen, including Namibian farmer N!xau (as Xi) who had not acted before his involvement in this film. (The exclamation point in his name represents the clicking sound the Bushmen use in their language – listen for it in the movie.) It’s often hard because of the documentary style, the realism of the mise en scene, the dubbing of certain characters, and the rawness of the filming and editing to see what’s going on as a carefully crafted film experience.

As America moved away from the realism of 1970s’ films and into a period of film-making evidenced by highly polished techniques and looks, The Gods Must Be Crazy, a South African film, provided a refreshing, unassuming, and charming alternative when it was released in America in 1984. (It ranked 29^th in domestic gross at 30 million dollars; Beverly Hills Cop was the top.) Perhaps movie-goers were drawn in by the film’s thought-provoking commentary on the craziness of modern society. Or perhaps they just enjoyed its off-beat humor. Whatever made it one of the top 30 films of that year, it retains those qualities today and is still an example of Must-See World Cinema.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser