The
films of Laurel and Hardy have a timelessness to them in spite their first film having been made eighty years ago. With the long-overdue DVD issues of their inventory, fans are no longer relegated to catching them on the occasional Sunday morning. The 1967 publication date of
The Films of Laurel and Hardy, at the height of a renewed interest in their work, matters little to the relevance of the book’s content. William Evenson’s well placed praises and criticisms are as timeless as the films themselves. Although he richly details every film with finely-tuned and nuanced
insight, his over arching theme is that the duo were at their
best when Stanley’s simpleton naiveté combined with Oliver’s know-it-all faux refinement bring on guaranteed disaster and at their weakest when mired with too much screen
time or overly-involved storylines. He contends, and time has proven, the films have lasting value not because they held any profound insight but precisely because they made very little attempt at political satire or pokes at the social conventions of their times. (Even the earlier films of Woody Allen, with all their clever insights into early seventies convention, feel hopelessly dated today.)Their last
Film ,
Utopia, with its anti-capitalist bent, is the only exception.But to call Laurel and Hardy purely physical comedians, an art at which they excelled, ignores the subtle intricacies wordplay and physical expressions between the two: Oliver straightening his tie, Stanley fingering his unkempt hair, sobbing to the audience for sympathy, while Oliver smugly glares at him. While Emerson is clearly in awe of his subjects, he is nonetheless, unflinching in his criticism of their weaker films. To his credit, he keeps his commentary strictly to their films and makes no attempt to analyze his subjects as human beings or give the slightest insight into their personal lives (outside some very brief biographies at the beginning of the book.) He chronicles the entire expanse of their career from 1926 to 1952, virtually every film they ever made, including the ones lost over time, misplaced, or otherwise destroyed. With the possible exception of Charlie Chaplin, theirs is the only comedy act to have survived the transition from silent to sound pictures. In fact, Stanley’s whining (“But Ollie, I couldn’t help it.”) and Oliver’s defeated dignity (“well, here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.”) as well as the exaggerated sounds of various crashings and bone-crunchings and Oliver’s desperate screams as he slips on an errant roller skate or bar of soap serve to actually accentuate the comic effect in their films. The plots of their shorts were simple, deceptively simple, but whether they involved babysitting their own children, moving a piano up a flight of stairs, installing a radio antenna or getting ready for a picnic, the boys managed to milk single situations, usually with a building or automobile destroyed, and Oliver with his dignity in tatters, starring at the camera for sympathy. The feature length films are definitely hit or miss, but the sixty-plus minute
Sons of The Desert and
Way Out West, are considered among the best comedies ever made - by anyone. Even in their weakest, most tedious, films, the perfect timing, the camaraderie and innate charm of the two can’t help but shine through. To paraphrase Emerson, the worst of Laurel and Hardy is almost always better than the best of any of their other contemporaries. We don’t need to know the messy details of how many times they were married or who had a drinking problem: we simply love them because of the unstated, but very portent, love between the two of them.
Published: November 24, 2006
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