Married four times, detested by Aleister Crowley but friends with Howard Hughes, Preston Sturges should not be begrudged his mastery of the screwball comedy. He had a lot of material to work with. But his genius was to craft dialogue and pace his actors with such naturalism as to make the ridiculous seem inevitable.

This genius is on display today at the Brattle Theatre, which is screening The Palm Beach Story (1942). Its reported original title, "Is Marriage Necessary?" is also its conceit. Claudette Colbert steals the film with her cool, scheming resolve as she leads her husband (Joel McCrea) on a rail-bound race to Florida (because you can get to Palm Beach from Penn Station). Along the way, she meets such social caricatures as the Ale and Quail Club (future member: Dick Cheney), a millionaire who doesn't tip (it's un-American), and the Weenie King.

Back in the forties, film critics thought that dialogists like Sturges debased the film comedy with all that talking. Brattle patrons will have a chance to make up their own minds tonight: Buster Keaton's silent masterpiece The General (1927) rounds out the double-feature. It's another train chase, this one set during the War of Northern Aggression (Keaton plays a Southerner). A young conductor (Keaton) loses a train and a girlfriend in one fell swoop. The plot involves his slapstick attempts to rescue both from the dastardly Union spies. Keaton, known as the Great Stone Face, appears unaware that anything funny is going on -- or that he is acting in a movie.

The General is in the public domain, so you can catch a glimpse of here, although Bostonist strongly urges you to watch both films on the big screen while you've got the chance.

The General screens today at 5:30 and 9:15
The Palm Beach Story screens at 7:30
See both films as a double-feature at the Brattle Theatre, Harvard Square.