The General (1926)

The main male character, Johnnie Gray, is in love with a woman, Annabelle Lee. Early on Johnnie tries to enlist in the army but gets rejected because they think he is at his current job meanwhile a couple of men happen to see Annabelle and lyingly told her that Johnnie did not even get in line to enlist. After hearing that news Annabelle was very upset with Johnnie so she got on a train that ended up being stolen or hijacked by their enemy of the war. However once Johnnie heard about this he decided to go try to rescue her meanwhile overhearing a conversation that their enemy was going to try to ambush their people. Therefore after he successfully saved Annabelle he went to warn the troops of what he had found out. Thanks to Johnnie they were able to then conquer their enemy so afterward he was finally able to become a soldier.

Having a background in black and white film photography, I have definitely noticed a lot of overlap between that and film making. That is why I was not very surprised when I found out from watching Visions of Light that film making originally began with photographers thus as soon as The General began playing I immediately noticed it was sepia toned or, according to Visions of Lights, tinted film. However there is more than just toning that filmmakers got from photography such as camera angles.

Camera angles, or perspective, help make the film or photo you are looking at more visually appealing to the eye, also known as aesthetics. For instance, most people do not want to look as a blurry image or film so having the camera in focus is always a good start. Some other common camera angles are close-ups, angle-up,  and angle-down but I refer more interesting angles like depth of field, converging/leading lines and reflections or shadows. Speaking about shadows, Grapes of Wrath had some excellent examples of how to use shadows in a film and they even seemed to follow a rule I heard in Visions of Lights that said you can “put shadows anywhere but their faces,” for obvious reasons. Nonetheless when it comes to The General there did not seem to be much use of shadows or any more interesting camera angles. However, also used in photography, they did seem to have pretty good contrast in most of their scenes.

Contrast in important because no one wants their subject to blend into the background, you should want your subject to stand out. In The General it seemed like they paid more attention to contrast than I expected they would have. For example, they seemed to use a lot of direct, or front, lighting and instead of being washed out by too much gray, like most black and white films, they had the actors and actresses dress darker thus making them stand out more against the gray scenery.  

Granted that there are many overlaps between photography and filmmaking, filmmaking does have to consider a few aspects that is not needed for photography, like acting. Acting a huge part of filmmaking and in The General I noticed a lot more exaggerated movements that would not need to be exaggerated in non-silent films. While some of it was a bit over-the-top, overall I enjoyed watching the exaggerations. It added more passion and comedy into the film. A director from The Hollywood Narrative said that they will try to “exaggerate some to make a point” even though it may not be as necessary now, with sound, as it was back-in-the-day, with silent films.