The General

AroView: Buster Keaton risks life and limb to pursue his beloved rail engine, hijacked by Union spies at the time of the U.S. Civil War. A hilarious, sophisticated action-comedy that is considered one of the greatest ever made, with its sequence of sight gags each topping the one before it.

Adapted from the 1889 memoir The Great Locomotive Chase by William Pittenger, the star/director also risked life and limb with the huge budget, which at the time did not return a profit, and therefore impacted on his future independence as a filmmaker.

[Restored version]