Blu-Ray Review: The General

1926
Directed By Buster Keaton + Clyde Bruckman

One of the greatest of all silent films was one of the very first to make the leap to blu-ray.... and the transfer is amazing.
The added clarity of blu-ray adds so much to The General. The film has been the victim of poor, cheap public domain releases for decades. The first time I saw the film some of the nighttime sequences were so dark, you couldn't tell what was going on at all, while during the day, the focus was muddy or the film was brutally scratched up. Kino International's print cures ALL those ills.
 There is NOT ONE scratch on the film the whole way through. There are small white speckles throughout the print but they are minor and not distracting. What is distracting, is the added clarity and sharpness draws your eyes away from the action to stare at the beauty of the surroundings! (This is NOT a complaint!)

Accompanying the film is your choice of three completely different musical scores and several extras:

--- The General was based on an event during the Civil War known as the 'Great Locomotive Chase' when Union operatives stole the locomotive and several southerners raced to get it back. You can learn this history and get a tour of the real General, which resides in a Georgia museum. This is the longest special feature and runs nearly 20 minutes.
---'A brief tour of filming locations' is also included, though the 'tour' is just a few of black and white photos interspersed with footage of the film. At a scant 4 minutes, it barely scratches the surface.
--- Two filmed introductions of past TV airings are also included, one by Gloria Swanson, the other by Orson Welles.
--- A 5 minute montage of Keaton's many humorous uses of trains from his shorts and other feature films.
--- And last and probably the rarest, a minute of home movies taken of the making of the film. I doubt much behind the scenes footage exists from the silent era, so it's great to see this brief glimpse.

The extras are not exhaustive, but provide excellent support for this classic. Due to the high esteem the film has, I'm surprised there is no audio commentary by a film historian that could shed more insight on the making of the film. Did the various musical scores take up too much space on the disc?

This is the best possible way to see The General, until time machines are invented so we can see it pristine on opening day.