I was shocked to look over my DVD/Blu-ray collection and find I didn’t actually own a single title from Kino, the eclectic home entertainment studio. They have several noteworthy films in their collection and on top of The General there’s Battleship Potemkin, the Griffith Masterworks, Ballast, Metropolis, The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari and their collection of F.W. Murnau films is impressive. Yet, I own none of them, which makes the addition of Buster Keaton’s classic silent comedy The General on Blu-ray a special occasion.
First off, this film is great without any kind of high definition clean-up. My first time watching it was September of 2008 and it was on Netflix’s Instant Play service and I loved it then as much as I loved it this time around, but the comparison stops there. Kino’s restoration and presentation is immaculate. The General was released in 1927 and is now the oldest film available on the Blu-ray high definition format, but you wouldn’t know it to look at it. Just take a look at several comparison shots at DVD Beaver if you don’t believe me. They’re stunning by comparison.
I know many people, especially younger movie fans, look at silent films as something of a chore. The fact you have to read title cards and dedicate yourself wholly to the story puts it on even footing with watching a foreign film with subtitles. All I can say to anyone that feels that way is simply give this one a chance and it may win you over. Now having the film at my immediate disposal I was surprised myself how easy it was to fall right back into watching it, even after stepping away for a few minutes. It’s a pure joy.
Keaton stars as Johnny Gray, a young train engineer who is rejected by the Confederate Army because he is seen as more valuable due to his profession. However, he soon finds himself in the middle of it all as Yankee spies steal his locomotive… The General. Laughs ensue and an amusing romance is at the center of it all. The story is simple, but the actions of Keaton are unparalleled.
As for this Blu-ray, the features are all the same as those available on Kino’s Ultimate DVD edition released in November of 2008. The main difference being accessibility via Blu-ray’s menu system as well as the fact they are now in HD.
First off, you get three musical scores to choose from including:
- Music composed and conducted by Carl Davis, performed by The Thames Silents Orchestra (in DTS-HD Master 5.1 at 1816 kbps or 2.0 LPCM uncompressed stereo)
- Music arranged and directed by Robert Israel in 2.0 Dolby at 224 kbps
- Theatre organ score by Lee Erwin in 2.0 Dolby at 224 kbps
The Carl Davis score was what I listened to the most simply because it is the best quality audio, but purists may be interested in the other two as each offer their own noticeable take on the music and none of which sound awful, I just loved the DTS quality of the Davis version.
Next is an 18 minute video tour of the authentic General led by Harper Harris, the lead interpreter of the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History in Kennesaw, Georgia where The General is immortalized. You will learn a variety of details about the train such as its involvement in the Great Locomotice Chase of 1862 and a variety of facts such as it cost $8,850 new when it was built in 1855, it weighs 53 tons, is 51 feet long and can go around 60 miles per hour.
In what is probably the best feature of the bunch, John Bangston, author of the book “Silent Echoes,” tours the locations used for The General and in this four-miniute featurette shows us how they look now compared to how they looked 83 years ago. To go along with this there is also a one minute peek at home movie footage offering a brief look at the making-of the film in Cottage Grove, Oregon.
At almost six minutes, “The Buster Express” offers a look at a series of train gags from Keaton’s career. There are also a pair of introductions for the film for television use, one by Gloria Swanson (2 mins) and another by Orson Welles (12 mins). Swanson’s is rather simple while Welles’s gives a larger look at Keaton’s background leading up to The General as well as a look at a variety of his earlier work. He goes as far as to say The General is “100 times more visually stunning than Gone with the Wind.” Now that’s a compliment.
Finally, there’s a gallery of 75 images including domestic and international posters as well as a couple of shots from a deleted sequence from the film.
Overall I couldn’t be more impressed. Kino has opted to use a similar menu system to Criterion’s Blu-ray releases and made sure this release was worthy of the film included on it. If you are interested in getting into silent films you couldn’t start with a better selection. If this one doesn’t work for you there may be no chance of you enjoying silents, which is too bad because there’s a lot more to add to the conversation.
