Mount Vernon, Washington
712 South First Street
Contact Us!
DonateCalendarFacebookInstagramInstagramYouTube

The General - 89th Anniversary Celebration

Saturday, Apr 25, 7:00 pm

THE GENERAL, the 1926 silent classic, will be screened with Jeff Fox at the console of the giant Wurlitzer, as part of our 89th anniversary. Consistently ranked among the greatest films ever made, Buster Keaton's THE GENERAL is so brilliantly conceived and executed that it continues to inspire awe and laughter with every viewing. This edition was mastered in HD from a 35mm archive print struck from the original camera negative.

Jeff Fox, who was instrumental (pun intended) in returning our Wurlitzer to functionality in the 1980's (and recovering our original chandeliers), returns to the Lincoln to play for this evening's screening!

The evening will include a prefilm concert featuring two of the numbers performed on opening night. Our projectionist, David Austin, has unearthed a cartoon from 1926 and will end the evening with some specially created trailers. We'll wrap up the evening with Birthday Cake and refreshments. All of this entertainment for our opening night price of only 35 cents!

Rejected by the Confederate army as unfit, and taken for a coward by his beloved Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack), young Johnny Gray (Keaton) is given a chance to redeem himself when Yankee spies steal his cherished locomotive. Johnny wages a one-man war against hijackers, an errant cannon and the unpredictable hand of fate while roaring along the iron rails. Every shot has the authenticity and the unassuming correct composition of a Mathew Brady Civil War photograph, wrote film historian David Robinson, No one not even Griffith or Huston and certainly not Fleming (Gone With the Wind) caught the visual aspect of the Civil War as Keaton did.