Laurel and Hardy-Silent vs. Sound

After viewing the silent and sound Laurel and Hardy shorts, it seems to me that the team really didn't hit their full stride until they began making sound films.
It seems like in recent years, the silent shorts have come to be more highly regarded than the sound shorts. This may be due to the fact that all their silent shorts are available on DVD in beautiful, pristine versions, while the sound shorts continue to linger in a copyright no-man's land.
However, I feel that their silent shorts do not show their unique comic talents off to full advantage. At the same time, their silent shorts represent some of the finest comedy of the silent era. I'm not saying that Laurel and Hardy weren't great in silent comedy. It's just that they were even *better* in the sound shorts.
Taking a look at the silent shorts, the first thing I notice is that it took Laurel and Hardy several films before finally arriving at a true screen teaming. Despite the fact that they appear as a team in the early "Duck Soup" (1927), it would be several more films before they achieved the same kind of partnership on screen.
In the silent comedy two-reeler, the film must keep moving. The best Laurel and Hardy silents are the ones that justify that type of continual action, such as BIG BUSINESS. The reciprocal destruction endings tended to be more commonplace in the silent films than in the talkies because they provided sustained action and served as a great way to wrap the film up with a bang.
However, with characters as strong as Laurel and Hardy, the reciprocal destruction endings are funnier when they can really involve the characters' responses as opposed to just escalating the chaos. The pants-ripping finale from YOU'RE DARN TOOTIN' is one example of this. In the best silents, the action was paced well enough to justify the constant action, such as in THE BATTLE OF THE CENTURY, TWO TARS and BIG BUSINESS. In the early talkies, Laurel and Hardy kept the reciprocal destruction routines pretty much as they had in the silents. Examples of this are the shirt-ripping in BERTH MARKS, the rice throwing in HOOSEGOW, and the rowboat battle in MEN O'WAR. The problem with these sequences are that they are all about the destruction themselves, and not as much about character and buildup, which Laurel and Hardy would perfect a little further along in the sound era. Compare these two sequences with THEM THAR HILLS and TIT FOR TAT, both of which contain reciprocal destruction scenes played to perfection. The pacing of these shorts is slowed down enough so that the characters motivation and responses can be captured. The reaction shots are simply hilarious.
Laurel and Hardy did not inherently need dialogue to work. Their humor was almost completely visual. However, their voices matched their characters so well that they were perhaps the only silent film stars to genuinely benefit from sound. The intertitles of silent film could not quite convey their thoughts and motivations in the same way that their voices could.
By the time they completely masted the sound film (which I personally feel was sometime in 1930, with films such as BRATS, BLOTTO, and ANOTHER FINE MESS), they used sound in a creative way to actually enhance their comedy without ever calling attention to itself. In other words, there were no intentionally loud, crazy sound effects, but subtle sound cues that made certain things simply funnier.
In silent comedy, the gag was the thing. In fact, lesser comics can be immediately spotted by their dependency on gags. Gags were a dime a dozen in the 1920s, and any comic could use stock gags to fill up their one- and two-reel comedies. The trick was to provide logic, character, motivation and response to these gags to make them individual and memorable. The same gag performed by Chaplin, for instance, would be totally different in the hands of Keaton. It would be all the funnier because of how their characters' react, and how they make the gag unique to themselves. Ultimately, we react more to the character than the gag itself. However, the same gag done by Jimmy Aubrey or Clyde Cook remains just a gag, and nothing more.
Laurel and Hardy, of course, were far more successful at using their strong characters to enhance the gags. Looking at the early Hal Roach shorts, before they were officially a team, they pretty much just consist of gags and situations, with very thin characters and character response. By the time of a short such as, say, YOU'RE DARN TOOTIN' (1928), Oliver Hardy's reaction shots to the pepper spilling out on his food are funnier than the actual gag itself. Within the confines of the silent two-reeler, the reaction shots such as this had to be kept to a minimum in order to keep the action moving. In the talkie shorts, the pacing would often slow down very much so that they could milk the reaction shots for their full comic worth. This type of deliberate pacing has earned Laurel and Hardy some criticism, but I feel that it is totally unique to their style and makes the films much funnier than they otherwise might have been.
I don't want to sound as if I'm completely dismissing the silent shorts outright. As I said before, they are undoubtedly among the greatest and funniest comedies of the silent era. But it does seem that Laurel and Hardy benefitted from the pacing that they developed during the sound era.

Laugh with Max Linder: DVD review

Max Linder will forever be remembered as the man whom Charlie Chaplin called his “professor”. Chaplin’s immense respect and praise of Linder as a comedian has forever ensured Linder the kind of critical attention that other comedians of the same period lack. Linder, in a sense, created screen comedy. He was the first major comedy star, originating in France, and began appearing in films as early as 1905. From the period between 1905 and 1917, Linder created a number of short comedies for Pathe studios in France. Following an injury in the first World War, Linder came to the United States to make films for the Essanay company, and produced several independent feature films as well, before his death by suicide in 1925.
For years, the work of Max Linder has been frustratingly difficult to see. It was, for many years, available only in cut-down versions prepared by his daughter, Maud. Those two compilation films were more or less the only way to sample the films of one of the great comic minds of the early film period.
Now, thanks to the usual high-quality preservation work of David Shepard and Film Preservation Associates, four of Linder’s early shorts are available, in pristine complete prints, on DVD. “Laugh with Max Linder” (Image) is the new collection of Max Linder’s work that is sure to win him new fans. Linder is ripe for re-evaluation, and this disc is the perfect place to start for those unfamiliar with his work.
First up are four short films by Linder, from his period in France. These four shorts include “Troubles of a Grass Widower”, “Love’s Surprises”, “Max Takes a Picture”, and “Max Sets the Style”. These four shorts are basically situational comedies. Linder milks the most humor out of individual situations as opposed to the frenetic, action-oriented slapstick comedies of Keystone and others. This is perhaps where we can best see his influence on Chaplin-in that he preferred to slow down the pacing a bit, focus on character and situations, and work on milking gags for all their comic worth. Additionally, these shorts provide a glimpse of the humor that Linder made popular over the hundreds of shorts he made during these years.
Next up is the main feature, “Seven Years Bad Luck” (1921), cited by some as being among the finest of silent screen comedies. This film was made in the United States, and sees Linder later in his career, but still at the height of his comic powers. The premise of the film concerns a wealthy man (Linder) who is set to be married. Following the breaking of a large mirror (including the famous mirror routine), he believes he will be daunted by seven years bad luck, and must go out of his way to avoid potentially unlucky situations. Along the way, he gets himself in to far more trouble than if he had just gone about his usual routine. As with most silent comedies, plot is not the focus here, but rather the situations and the way Max’s character reacts to them.
The disc is wrapped up with some nice special features. One of these is footage of Max clowning on the set with a visitor and friend, director Maurice Tourneur. The other is a 13 minute excerpt from Linder’s 1921 feature “Be My Wife”. This segment is quite funny, and for years was the only surviving piece of this feature. The entire feature now exists, but according to sources who have seen the entire film, this 13 minute segment is one of the few highlights of the film. This is the same segment that was included on David Shepard’s “Slapstick Encyclopedia” set several years ago. The disc is a wonderfully funny and well-priced collection that will be a revelation to anyone unfamiliar with Linder’s brilliantly funny work. To those who are already familiar with him, this set is still a must, as it is by far the most complete and pristine collection yet available of one of the funniest men to grace the screen.