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Buster Keaton in The General: funny (especially the shoe gag), touching (especially when he gets the girl) and impressive (especially the stunt with the railway sleepers). But Friday's screening of the 1926 comedy/action classic was particularly enjoyable because it featured the UK premiere of the 2005 score written by Timothy Brock.
Inspired by the music of the American Civil War – the setting for the film – it is a bombastic (and occasionally silly) piece of music that is particularly good in the action scenes. The music is not a modern reinterpretation, it's a celebration of the past, but more importantly it's good fun, with starring roles for the drums and trumpets.
Friday's performance by the BBC SSO is also part of a welcome trend in cinema towards film with live scores: Hitchcock's The Lodger with a score by Nitin Sawhney at the GFT last year; Nosferatu and Gloria Swanson's Stagestruck at Bo'ness; and the SSO's performance of Psycho in 2011. All this seems to be a response to a need for cinema that's more authentic than the blockbuster.
And The General is an ideal choice. It was pretty much dismissed when it was released, and didn't do much for Keaton's career, but over the years more critics have used the word "classic". And rightly so.
Just look at the stunts: the train crashing into the river, Buster sitting on the engine's wheels, and the two armies clashing on the plains of Oregon. All of that was performed for real. Which means that a screening of the film with a live score, performed live and with passion, is just about the best way to see it.
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