For the staggering locomotive bridge collapse scene in Buster Keaton‘s The General, which happened in Cottage Grove, Oregon on 7.23.26, somewhere between three and six cameras were rolling.
One portion of the film’s Wiki page says that “the crew brought three 35 mm cameras with them from Los Angeles”; another passage reports that “Keaton used six cameras for the train wreck scene.”
And yet the scene contains only one shot of the actual collapse and kersplash — not even one alternate angle, although there should have been at least two with at least three 35mm cameras available. (And possibly even six.)
What was Keaton thinking?
If I’d been in charge of the shoot I would’ve had an insulated, gelatin water-proofed, rubber-encased 16mm camera (such cameras were being sold as of 1923) mounted and running inside the train’s engine cabin, and I certainly would’ve had another 16mm camera mounted and shooting from the right-side base of the bridge, just in front of where the engine was due to crash and splash.
With these two extra vantage points the final sequence would have been twice as astounding. But for some curious reason Keaton, who was nothing if not ambitious and energetic in his usual approach to directing stunts and action sequences, opted for only one shot and a master one at that, captured by a tripod-mounted camera located 250 or 300 feet away.
The genius-level Keaton starred, produced and co-directed The General. He was 31 at the time.
24 years later Keaton performed a cameo (more or less playing himself) in Billy Wilder‘s Sunset Boulevard. The poor guy was only 55 years old, but easily looked 65. Alcohol had taken a toll.
