Ranks alongside BIG BUSINESS and THE MUSIC BOX as one of the truly great Laurel and Hardy films. The boys' inability to clean up the house without reducing it to a shambles in the process sums up the essence of their comedy, and the endless succession of assaults on Hardy's dignity take on epic proportions here. Perhaps the highest compliment one can pay is that they make it look so easy.
ANY OLD PORT
Never cited as one of the team's better efforts, usually due to its grim tone and unpleasant atmosphere. With its story of the boys rescuing a cleaning girl from a forced marriage to brutish Walter Long, the film plays like a send-up of old melodramas. The unpleasantness of the first half is offset a bit by the comic boxing-match that takes up the second half, though this scene too is a bit of a disappointment, and lacks the grace and timing of the prizefight sequence from their earlier THE BATTLE OF THE CENTURY. Overall one of their least inspired efforts, not helped by the uncharacteristically dark tone.
THE MUSIC BOX
1932 was certainly a good year for Laurel and Hardy. The team managed to produce not one but three of the very best works of their entire career. So much has already been written on this film that it is difficult to add anything new. From as simple a situation as trying to move a piano up a staircase, Laurel and Hardy mine the depths of the comic possibilities to be found in the eternal struggle of trying to succeed at a task and failing. Like some of the best W.C. Fields comedies in this respect, the boys' humor remains as fresh and relevant as ever because it speaks to something universal and timeless.
THE CHIMP
One of the team's stranger efforts, though still pretty funny. When James Finlayson's circus closes down, the employees each get to take home a part of the show in lieu of payment. Laurel gets the flea circus, while Hardy is stuck with Ethel the performing chimp. Looking for a place to stay, the boys sneak Ethel into a seedy boarding house while hiding her from the landlord. A slight re-working of their earlier comedies ANGORA LOVE and LAUGHING GRAVY, this one works as well as it does because of the expressive and funny performance of Charles Gemora, Hollywood's number one gorilla impersonator, in the title role. Other highlights include Hardy in a tutu being chased by a lion, Laurel's flea circus getting loose in bed, and Ethel's impromptu ballet number, which borders on the surreal. It also contains some decidedly risque pre-code humor, such as the landlord believing that the boys' are hiding his wife in their room, and the chimp snuggling with Hardy in bed.
COUNTY HOSPITAL
This one gets less funny with each viewing for me. The idea of Stan visiting Ollie in the hospital is loaded with potential, but they just never quite make the most of it. And the finale, with the wild car chase shot entirely in front of a process screen, fails to deliver either the necessary thrills, or the kind of reflexive humor that W.C. Fields got out of similar back projection scenes in THE FATAL GLASS OF BEER or MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE. Still, it's a solid if minor effort, and there's plenty of fun moments to enjoy here -- it just doesn't hold up as well for me over repeated viewings compared to their best work. It does contain one of Laurel's best "food" sequences, where he manages to reduce me to hysterics just by eating a hard-boiled egg on screen.
SCRAM!
Like OUR WIFE, this is another one of the team's situation comedies that tends to get overlooked when mentioning their funniest films. It's an expertly written and performed farce, and is one of their few films that feels almost like an ensemble piece, with the fine supporting performances of Vivian Oakland, Rychard Cramer and Arthur Housman contributing greatly to the fun.
THEIR FIRST MISTAKE
Another one of those films that seems to be as much about Laurel and Hardy exploring their characters as it is the gags and situations. Ollie adopts a baby thinking it will help save his marriage; however, when he comes home with the baby, he finds his wife has left him, and he talks Stan in to staying to help him raise it. Not one of the team's more inspired or memorable efforts, and the situation never quite builds much comic momentum. Contains the classic pre-code exchange in which Ollie tells Stan that his wife complains that he thinks more of him than he does of her. "You do, don't you?", Stan asks. Ollie replies, "Well, we won't go into that."
TOWED IN A HOLE
The third Laurel and Hardy classic released in 1932. The boys are fish sellers who decide to cut out the middleman by catching their own fish, so they pick out an old boat to restore and go about repairing it with predictably disastrous results. Watching this film, one gets the sense that the team really had reached an artistic peak around this point, at least as far as their sound films are concerned (certainly their work in the late silent period of 1928-29 achieved a remarkable consistency of high quality, and produced at least two classics). Every movement, every gag and every bit of slapstick is so perfectly choreographed, timed and executed that you really do get the sense of watching two great artists at the very top of their game, working with utter confidence and mastery of their craft. Due in no small part to Laurel's creative guidance and expert filmmaking craftsmanship, it's remarkable how seamless the formal aspects of their films had become by this point compared with their earlier talkies of just a couple years prior. Their best directors achieve a real invisibility of style that never calls attention to itself and always works to emphasize the performances and gags.
No comments:
Post a Comment