The Electric House (1922)

Short comedy, starring Buster Keaton and featuring Joe Roberts. A botanist, is mistaken for an electrical engineer and ends up getting a contract to wire a millionaire's house.

followed by

The General (1926)

Taking inspiration from a real Civil War incident when Union soldiers hijacked a Confederate train, The General was silent comedian Buster Keaton’s most grandly conceived project. The train driver who goes in dogged pursuit of his beloved engine is a classic Keaton character: stoical, determined and preternaturally straight-faced as chaos reigns around him.

The film is a seamless blend of action and comedy, involving a great number of stunts – including the famous sequence in which a bridge bearing a railroad train collapses into a gorge. The great expense that such moments incurred was remembered when the film was a commercial disaster, to the cost of Keaton’s future creative freedoms. Only decades later was The General recognised as one of silent cinema’s greatest comedies.