Why Keaton is great ? [ The general ]

History of cinema is made of masterpieces, and is only composed of them in fact. Because of the numerous number of movies, we just know the best one who went through the time. And it may seems difficult to understand why a movie like "The general" is brillant.  The debate we can read around to determine who is the best between Keaton or Chaplin show it . It is not that we can not choose between Chaplin or Keaton : on each one of us will have a prefered one ! The main thing is that we do not have  to choose. Keaton and Chaplin are both of them brillant ! Study of history of cinema make us forget to compare them with the other film makers of this time, but if we do it we suddenly rembember the difference between a good and a brillant movie.

History of cinema also show us that technic is the crucial point to make a good movie. The question is what do you do with the technique you have : do you go beyond this technic, do you bring something more, which touch to the public's imaginary ? 

One of the first train movie was "The great Train robbery" that we now can watch on Youtube :

This movie is key in cinema's history, as we can read on filmsite.org (http://www.filmsite.org/grea.html), but it did not last on the memories of cinema critics. Why ?

Because it stays at a technical level : first parallel editing, minor camera movement, location shooting, stage-bound camera placement, jump-cuts , cross-cuts... So it is technically brillant, but loose the point of speaking to the mind of people : it is descriptive, and do not let enuogh space to imagine something. This while Keaton and Chaplin are proposing heroes who are thinking and are open door to a reflexion time. 

Thus having an access to minor film, and spending time watching them help us to remmeber what was also cinema on these time : what was public's expectation and what were we ready to accept as normal and great cinema. The masterpieces which we know the name even without having been given the possibility to watch them are the one which did not get old with time. They are fulfilled with ideas which go beyond the technic and speak directly to the universals values of humanity : love, fear, bravery, good, bad, god, war, laugh and tears. Technic do not change anything to that. Today Hollywood's cinema tend to forgot this essential part of cinema.