34. Buster Keaton as Johnny Gray 
      The General (1927)

Keaton was nicknamed “The Great Stone Face,” but we should not confuse disinclination to smile with paucity of expressiveness. In this Civil War–set story of a young man wanting to do good by his two loves—his sweetheart and the train he engineers (both of which he must rescue, as it were, from Yankee plots)—Keaton, still the screen’s greatest physical actor, brings us into his character’s yearning, panic, frustration, melancholy, pride, and scores of other emotions, all the while unblinkingly performing miraculous stunts that Jackie Chan would no doubt admit to envying.

Next Entry