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Show Union Movies: In "THE GENERAL," Buster Keaton plays a southern civil war days railroad engineer whose beloved be-loved locomotive, THE GENERAL, is stolen by Union Army spies. Keaton pursues the stolen locomotive locomo-tive so diligently and in so many ways that the spies think that many people are pursuing them. The chase continues across the South, into Union territory; the plot moves through a heroine kidnapping, kid-napping, intrigue behind enemy lines, and a rescue; and the film climaxes in a magnificent battle scene involving the Union and Confederate Con-federate armies, a Union locomotive, locomo-tive, and a huge burning trestle-bridge. trestle-bridge. THE GENERAL is one of the last great comedies of the silent screen. Much of it is devoted to the famous chase sequences: first Buster chases the spies, then the spies chase Buster. The story is based on an actual occurrence, and despite being be-ing a comedy, THE GENERAL is quite a thriller in its own right and spins a very lucid account of the adventure. The climactic battle scene is staged on a scale worthy of D. W. Griffth, and is exceptionally exception-ally well photographed. While the film is somewhat slower paced than some of Keaton's earlier efforts, ef-forts, the gags are more deliberately deliberate-ly spaced, and there is more substance sub-stance to the story Even with fewer laughs than usual, it is still funnier than any three or four of today's comedies bundled together. |