The story
the plot turns in the chase between ii railway locomotive engine & the railroad worker, played by Keatin, ab initio on a go-cart & after a second locomotive. Although played for laughs in the film, many of the cases actually occurred inside the chase through Georgia and Tennessee between trains pulled by locomotives named General and Texas (see Great Locomotive Chase for more details on the actual event). A event was besides a subject of the film The Great Locomotive Chase.

Keatin performs lots of unsafe physical stunts on & about a moving train, which include jumping from either a engine to a boxcar, sitting on a cow-catcher, & line the roof.

the climax of the film includes the outstanding moment in which a bridge (sabotaged by Keaton's character) collapses as a train crosses it (compare The Bridge on the River Kwai). This scene was one of a lone virtually all expensive shots inside motion picture history at a instance, though Keaton felt it was worth it. the production company may not afford to dislodge a wreckage when a scene was filmed, and then it left it there, in which it became a minor holidaymaker attraction for about twenty years. A metal of the train was salvaged for discarded in the period of World War II.

Critics and audience responses
A General received simply mediocre reviews upon its release. It was non one of Keaton's large pack professional successes, which disappointed him when he considered it to become a right of a lot his moving picture. Audiences & critics would late agree by using him when re-looking for the film, & these are today considered a classic.

A film is systematically in the Internet Movie Database's list of top 250 films, was #18 in American Film Institute's One c Years, 100 Laughs, & has been deemed "culturally significant" per United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.