Cops + The High Sign

Cops and The High Sign together clearly show one of the great hallmarks of early 1920’s slapstick comedy: escape, pursuit and the need to elude (with the aid of no little imagination) a world become otherwise hostile. In Cops, a series of misunderstandings turns Keaton into the object of an endless police chase; in The High Sign, the action proceeds in sudden twists and improbable ways out between targets, hidden passages and secret societies. In both cases, Keaton’s comic body negotiates the chaos with that stolid precision that is his most emblematic feature.