The Finishing Touch (1928)

This is another Laurel and Hardy short from their early period, before the later sound films for which they would later become well known. It's coming up to four years since my rave review of a similar short, Leave 'Em Laughing; this is every bit as good. Then again, so were all the many (sound) shorts I happened to see on the telly back in the '80s when schedulers weren't afraid of black and white.

This is sheer cartoon humour, done extremely well, by two superlative comedy actors who excel, particularly, in facial comedy acting. A superb script helps, with a conceit that is straightforwardly funny, but what really makes this short film excel is the comedy double act between Laurel and Hardy and their little mannerisms. There's a hint of melancholy in that these two, a kind of pre-Depression Lenny and George, will forever be poor, struggling and aimless but such thing are, rightly, not dwelt upon in favour of hilariously well-executed slapstick comedy.  And there's plenty of opportunity for that when these two try to build a house.

The hats, and Hardy's moustache, may be dated here, but the comedy hasn't. It's bizarre to think the two of them were a good few years younger than I am now while making this. Absolutely first class comedy, although I certainly ought to try a longer work of theirs one of these days.

Leave 'Em Laughing (1928)

It's a little odd, these days, to see a cinematically released comedy short that is but 21 minutes long, shorter than an episode of the typical sitcom even on commercial television. But this is bloody brilliant; the best of physical comedy which was never the same again for the generations of performers who grew up with sound. 

The visual comedy here is first class, from the slapstick of the concluding road dodgems sequence to the early scenes with Stan's aching tooth. Laurel and Hardy are geniuses without sound as much as with. This is bloody brilliant; obviously it's out of copyright so just watch it on YouTube if you've twenty minutes to spare and fancy a chuckle. Silent comedies just haven't dated in the way that some comedy from later on has done.

Well, the nurses have flapper hairstyles, the cars are 1928 vintage and have cranks, and our two stooges sleep in the same bed with nary an eyebrow raised, but you know what I mean...

The Man Who Laughs (1928)

"A queen made me a lord, but God made me a man!"

Gosh, what a fittingly republican sentiment that is for this of all weekends. Personally, I'm actually a bit of a moderate royalist these days but I don't really go in for the whole personality cult thing. Is it just me who finds the jubilee a bit scarily conformist, even threatening? This weekend you'll mostly find me battening down the hatches and playing the Sex Pistols very loudly. Anyway…

I first became aware of this film as an influence on Bob Kane when he came up with the character of the Joker back in 1940. Whatever book I was reading (something to do with the fiftieth anniversary of Batman back in 1989, I think) featured a photograph of Conrad Veidt in this film, looking uncannily like the character. And now I've finally seen it. It's tragic melodrama about a man deformed with a permanent grim, with a lot of pathos and a lot of meditating on how, like, all clowns are sad. There's one scene in particular, with Gwynplaine (the eponymous character) on stage in make-up, where it suddenly becomes obvious that this is exactly where the image of the Joker sprang from. In fact, not only does he look exactly like the Joker, he looks exactly like Heath Ledger as the Joker. It's quite uncanny.

This is based on a novel by Victor Hugo, albeit one so obscure that I suspect few people reading this will ever have clapped eyes on a copy, let alone read it. It's exactly what you probably expect, though; a melodrama with tragedy, romance, swordfights and an absurdly virtuous heroine, who in this case is blind. It's an entertaining enough romp, in a melodramatic kind of way, although the depiction of gypsies raises eyebrows, and so does the fact that the only two women in the film are the blind, virtuous Dea and the flighty, flirty Duchess who, in spite of the period clothing, is quite the flapper. Er, virgin / whore dichotomy, anyone? Also, there's a scene where the camera peers through a keyhole at the semi-naked Duchess. It's not so much the male gaze as What the Butler Saw.

It's ostensibly set in England during the reign of Queen Anne, with a flashback to the reign of James II… and these two monarchs are literally the only characters with names which sound remotely English. The setting doesn't remotely convince, costumes aside, as seventeenth and early eighteenth century England, and I suspect a lot of this would be due to the original novel, and Victor Hugo failing to realise that Stuart Britain was not like Louis XIV's France. We have scenes of Queen Anne ordering people to be tortured for information, and aristocrats being forced to live at court and marry at the whim of their monarch. All this is contrasted against a rather cruel world of clowns and freak shows which, while very, very creepy, is much more interesting.

It's also rather odd, even jarring, that this film is in the style of contemporary German Expressionism. It often looks great- there's a particularly eerie scene of hanged bodies swaying on the ropes- but it doesn't really evoke the setting. Still, it's worth watching for Conrad Veidt alone. It's also fascinating in that it isn't quite a silent film but it isn't quite a talkie either: there's no dialogue but there's the odd incongruous sound effect, of bells, wind and the like. We even get crowds shouting.

L'Etoile de Mer (1928)

"Nous sommes a jamais perdus dans le désert de léternèbre."

This is an interesting little comparison to Un Chien Andalou, directed a year earlier by Man Ray. The version I saw had a superb soundtrack by Paul Mercer which I recommend hugely.

The other film used conventional film-making tropes and techniques to depict surreal scenes, divorced from any context or sense of cause and effect, and that made it seem rather slippery to me. I found it hard to grab on to anything so I could talk about the film. That isn't the case here, with the use of soft focus. The blurring of the picture throughout the film is as much a part of the narrative as the events depicted, which I suppose can be understood in terms of the modernist foregrounding of form as opposed to content. As a piece of art this is far more a modernist work than a surrealist one. Interestingly, though, the picture often has a kind of Impressionist quality.

While there isn't any obvious plot here, there is a definite theme of beauty, which is interesting precisely because by 1928 it was a very old-fashioned conception of what art was supposed to be or do. We are tantalised with the beauty of the woman, with the first shot of her face which is in focus showing her peeping, face half-hidden, over a newspaper. Only at the end of the film are we male voyeurs finally rewarded.

The scenes of pieces of newspapers blowing across a beach remind me of the scene from American Beauty where a plastic bag, floating in the wind, is said to be beautiful. I couldn't say what their significance was, though. And as for the starfish I have no idea. But this is a fascinating film.