Film
Slapstick 2018: Buster’s Greatest Movie (and Biggest Flop)
- Director
- Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton
- Certificate
- No Cert
- Running Time
- 75 mins
These days, Buster Keaton’s American Civil War comedy The General is widely considered to be Old Stoneface’s masterpiece. It certainly boasts some extraordinary set-pieces, the most astonishing of which is a full-sized locomotive plunging from a burning bridge into a river.
But on release back in 1927, it was both a commercial and critical flop. As part of the Slapstick Festival‘s celebration of the centenary of Keaton’s screen debut, the mystery of its initial failure is explored by Peter Kramer, a senior fellow in the School of Art, Media and American Studies at the University of East Anglia, and author of The General book in the BFI Film Classics series.
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