The General

Title: The General
Year: 1927
Directors: Clyde Bruckman & Buster Keaton
Writers: Clyde Bruckman & Buster Keaton, adaptation by Al Boasberg & Charles Henry Smith
Starring: Buster Keaton, Marion Mack
Music: random classical music
Distinctions: currently #126 on IMDb’s Top 250
Length: 103 minutes
Synopsis: a Southern train engineer during the Civil War
How I saw it: on video (rented from Netflix), yesterday
Subjective Rating: 6/10
Objective Rating: 8/10 (points off for pacing and music)

Cute movie, but not great. It’s probably very important and influential, but I wouldn’t know about that sort of thing. The points off for pacing and music are entirely because of the version I saw. The IMDb says there are a number of 75-minute versions with original music. So it’s pretty unforgivable that Netflix has a budget video with an arbitrary public domain music track that nearly renders the movie unwatchable (after being unimpressed with the movie, I watched a minute or two of it with the sound off and was amazed at how much better it was).

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

Title: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
Year: 1927
Director: F.W. Murnau
Writers: Carl Mayer, Katherine Hilliker & H.H. Caldwell
Starring: George O’Brien, Janet Gaynor, Margaret Livingston
Music: Hugo Riesenfeld
Distinctions: Oscars for best picture (“Unique and Artistic Production”), actress (Gaynor, for three films) and cinematography; currently #176 on IMDb’s Top 250
Synopsis: a man plots to kill his wife, then re-falls in love with her
Length: 95 minutes
How I saw it: on video (rented from Netflix), December 2008
Subjective Rating: 4/10
Objective Rating: 4/10 (gets points for story, dialog, cinematography and music)

Boring. The story has a sort of classical/folk-tale-ish shape, which I like. The acting isn’t bad for a dramatic silent film, but is bad by any reasonable standards. The characters are completely without depth or reasonable motivations.