Director: William A. Seiter
It’s… been a while, to say the least, since I left off with the Laurel & Hardy features, which I started watching around the start of the time when I couldn’t be bothered much with films any more, and I wasn’t crash hot on the first two films so I thought I might be better leaving the rest for a time when I was more in the mood for them. Didn’t expect that to be two and a half years later, though…
Anyway, once more unto the L&H. The set I have actually doesn’t have all their films, for reasons I don’t understand though I presume it’s rights-related, so we actually skip over one (Fra Diavolo) to land on this, their fourth feature. I’d actually seen this before, on the big screen no less, back in the days of the old Cinematheque at the Chauvel, part of a double bill with one of the Robert Youngson compilations, and I recalled enjoying it so I was looking forward to finally revisiting it… and now that I have done, I’m not sure how much I did like it. While watching it, I kept thinking “this could really have been a two or three reel short”… and then I discovered it kind of had been; it’s basically a rework of their earlier short Be Big made in 1930, and damn me if it didn’t feel like a 1930 talkie as well… Stan & Ollie were never the speediest comedians—a lot of their humour revolved around Stan not getting something before eventually getting it wrong and Ollie’s reaction face—and the lack of incidental music (kind of surprising in a film from late ’33) kind of does nothing to make the film feel any livelier. Still, as I said of their last feature that I watched (Pack Up Your Troubles), the good bits really do shine, particularly the business of Ollie faking his illness and having to contend with a footbath full of too-hot water… I just didn’t like it on the whole as much as I remember doing about a decade ago or whenever it was. Maybe when they were still flourishing in short films they still weren’t sure what to do with features? Maybe.
The Cameraman's Revenge 
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