Buster Keaton's THE GENERAL! w/ Pipe Organ Score!

Name: Buster Keaton's THE GENERAL! w/ Pipe Organ Score!
Start: 2026-01-30T18:30:00-05:00
Location: Epsilon Spires

Schedule

Fri, 30 Jan, 2026 at 06:30 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

Epsilon Spires | Brattleboro, VT

Celebrate the 100th anniversary of THE GENERAL! Experience Buster Keaton's timeless comedic genius and miraculous stunts executed with awe-inspiring precision with a live musical score performed by Jeff Rapsis on our historic Estey pipe organ!
Our silent films with live soundtracks programming continues in 2026 with the 100th Anniversary of: THE GENERAL, the pioneering 1926 masterpiece by comedian extraordinaire, Buster Keaton. *This Event is Appropriate for All-Ages!
"The greatest comedy ever made, the greatest Civil War film ever made, and perhaps the greatest film ever made."
-Orson Wells
Consistently ranked among the most influental films of all time, Buster Keaton's 1926 masterpiece, THE GENERAL is so brilliantly conceived and executed that it continues to inspire awe and laughter with every viewing. An epic of silent comedy that includes an accurate historical recreation of a Civil War episode with hundreds of extras, dangerous stunt sequences, and an actual locomotive falling from a burning bridge into a gorge far below. It was inspired by a real event; the screenplay was based on the book "The Great Locomotive Chase,” written by William Pittenger, the engineer who was involved.
Behind-The-Scenes Background On The Film:
The General is admirably faithful to authenticity in costumes and props—the imagery evokes Matthew Brady’s Civil War photography—and its visual scope is not simply impressive, it is also dramatic and, at times, awe-inspiring. Keaton even learned to drive the engine himself and before long, according to the publicity of the time, he could stop the train on a dime. He plotted the comic geometry and action sequences in line with the design of the tracks and the landscape with exacting precision. There are no miniatures or rear-projection backdrops here. Every scene plays out on real engines charging past actual forests and hills, and the sequences depend on the intricate planning of a mechanical engineer—for instance, a snub-nose cannon that threatens to blow Johnnie Grey and his engine away until a fortuitous bend in the track provides a more opportune target.
For the scene in which Johnnie sets fire to a bridge to prevent the North’s engine from crossing the river, Keaton had his set designer construct a stunt trestle designed to collapse under the train’s weight. It was the only sequence that did not use existing track and it has been called the most expensive single shot in silent film history (Keaton biographies put the cost at $42,000). It is certainly the most expensive that Keaton ever executed. He had only one shot at the scene and ran six cameras to capture the spectacle. The engine that plunged into the river was one of the doubles used to stand in for the working engines and it rested there in the water, rusting away for 15 years until it was hauled out for salvage in the scrap drives of World War II. Keaton counted The General among his favorite films and it has since been hailed a masterpiece. But, in 1926, it was not so well received. It faced harsh reviews and slow attendance, and thanks to a budget larger than any previous Keaton feature, it lost money. It took decades for its reputation to rise from failure to classic."
-Sean Axmaker for the San Franscisco Silent Film Festival
"Today I look at Keaton's works more often than any other silent films. They have such a graceful perfection, such a meshing of story, character and episode, that they unfold like music. Although they're filled with gags, you can rarely catch Keaton writing a scene around a gag; instead, the laughs emerge from the situation; he was “the still, small, suffering center of the hysteria of slapstick,” wrote the critic Karen Jaehne. And in an age when special effects were in their infancy, and a “stunt” often meant actually doing on the screen what you appeared to be doing, Keaton was ambitious and fearless. He had a house collapse around him. He swung over a waterfall to rescue a woman he loved. He fell from trains. And always he did it in character, playing a solemn and thoughtful man who trusts in his own ingenuity."
-Roger Ebert
The Performance:
Jeff Rapsis lives in Bedford, New Hampshire, and accompanies silent film programs in venues throughout New England. A lifelong silent film fan, he began creating original musical scores and staging silent film programs in 2007 as a way to keep the form vibrant before the public. His technique is rooted in a traditional approach and texture, while applying imporovisation using contemporary scoring methods when appropriate to connect with today's audiences. Outside New England, he has accompanied films at the New York Public Library’s “Meet the Musicmakers” series and the Kansas Silent Film Festival. Rapsis has also provided original music for several silent film DVD releases by Looser Than Loose Vintage Entertainment of Manchester, N.H., and scored the independent feature film Dangerous Crosswinds (2005). His recorded scores also include piano music for Kino Lorber's reissue of Gloria Swanson's 'Zaza' (1923) and music for Reel Classic DVD's reissue of 'The Bells' (1926) starring Lionel Barrymore and Boris Karloff. As a composer, his 'Kilimanjaro Suite' for large orchestra was premiered in 2017 by the N.H. Philharmonic. A journalist by profession, Rapsis is co-founder and associate publisher of HippoPress, a weekly newspaper based in Manchester, N.H. He also serves as executive director of the Aviation Museum of N.H., a non-profit educational center based at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport. Jeff has previously performed live soundtracks on the historic Estey organ at Epsilon Spires for silent films: The Phantom Carriage, and The Last Command, Buster Keaton's Our Hospitality and Clara Bow's romantic comedy "It".