The General (April 23rd at the Cedar Lee Theatre)

[THE GENERAL screens Tuesday April 23rd at 7:00 pm at the Cedar Lee Theatre.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

If you really need a break from last week's ghastliness, be it the Brownscapolypse or Cavstastrophe or Boston or tax deadlines, be at the Cedar Lee for a bigscreen revival of a comedy that's so good that it's ranked among film historians as simply one of the greatest comedies ever. Perhaps one of the best films ever made, simple as that.

It's THE GENERAL. No, not a film based on that CGI auto-insurance salesman (and by the way, what's the deal with that General anyway? In what war did he serve? How many people did he kill? How does that qualify him to sell auto insurance exactly?), but rather the 1926 Buster Keaton masterwork, co-directed by Keaton and Clyde Bruckman, but, let's face it, Keaton's show all the way. For those lovers of Hollywood's true Golden Age (yes, hard to believe there was one) who still debate the question of who was better, Keaton or Chaplin, THE GENERAL is Exhibit A for Buster partisans.

The Great Dictator (May 14th and 15th at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[THE GREAT DICTATOR screens Saturday May 14th at 7:15 p.m. and Sunday May 15th at 3:45 p.m. at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady Jr.

Viewers are used to short-lived satire like EPIC MOVIE or DISASTER MOVIE, which will look terribly out of date just months later. Not exactly great art. But THE GREAT DICTATOR is different. This is satire as art, with indeed silent-era icon Charlie Chaplin - in his first film with extensive dialogue - on a mission to raise an outcry over the screwed-up world of the 1930s (seemingly more screwed-up than today, if that's possible), attacking the international villains of the era, the Third Reich. Between WWI and WWII, a title tells us up front, insanity reigns and humanity "got kicked about a bit" in a suspiciously German-looking country called Tomania.