Dances With Trains

For the most part I've never found the comedy classics of the silent film area to be terribly funny. Chaplin, for instance: I'm not sure I've ever laughed out loud at one of his films. So when we started the 75 minutes of Buster Keaton's The General one night last weekend I fully expected to fall asleep before it was over.

But not a bit of it. Once it gets rolling, so to speak, this movie is an absolute delight, a long precision romp featuring Keaton, two armies, and a whole lot of railroad equipment. If there's such a thing as genius in physical comedy, this is an instance of it. The word "classic" is thrown around way too loosely in the film world, but it certainly applies here. I actually want to see it again, an impulse I've had with very, very few silent films.