Laurel & Hardy - The Collection (21-disc Box Set) [DVD]

A must for any Laurel and Hardy fan, a near complete collection of their work together.Stan Laurel (born Arthur Stanley Jefferson in Ulverston North West England, his father ran the town theatre) was an English comedian, actor, writer and director at in golden age of movie making. He was paired in movies with an American comedy actor Oliver Norvell Hardy.Stan worked in vaudeville theatre and later travelled to the USA with Frank Karno’s troupe as Charlie Chaplins understudy. Eventually he came to the attention of Film director and Producer Hal Roach, who gave him acting work in early black and white movies, at some point noticing how well pairing him with another of his actors Oliver Hardy. The pair swiftly became a movie lead partnership in single reel comedies. Stan Laurel had planned to move away from acting into producing and directing but the response from movie goers showed that together that were incredibly well loved and the movies were very successful to the point they began to move to full length motion pictures. Stan Laurel would write the scripts while Olly would go and play golf.They were considered along with Chaplin, Buster Keaton, The Marx brothers and Harold Lloyd to be the best comedy film actors of the 1930’s and remain popular still, with new generations falling in love with their films.In this box set are all of their many great films both full length and shorts.Across the dvds are restored versions which are great quality in sound and picture.Particular highlights are ‘Way out West’ (considered one of the greatest comedy films of all time), my personal favourite which garnered their only Oscar for best short film ‘The music box’ in which the hapless duo try to deliver a player piano to a house at the top of large set of steps, the steps where it was filmed is now a world famous tourist attraction.Other movies include ‘Swiss miss’, ‘Flying deuces’, ‘Our relations’, ‘Laughing gravy’, ‘Blockheads’, ‘A chump at Oxford’ and many others.Some alternate versions of some movies are included including some colourised versions.I cannot recommend this box set enough.At Stan Laurels funeral, Buster Keaton told Dick Van Dyke “Chaplin wasn’t the funniest, I wasn’t the funniest, Stan was.”, a fitting tribute to an all time great.

Great content, terrible packaging.Review of the content.Many of the prints are excellent, most if not the best you'll ever see, very close. There are still a few somewhat washed out versions, "Angora Love", for example, but not so bad they can't be watched and enjoyed. I've never yet seen a print of "Liberty" without a degraded image of them both on the girder at 15'30" to 15'53", and this one is no different. Maybe the negative was damaged.While most of the prints are good, they are not necessarily the best available. I have not had time to do an exhaustive check, but a rather obvious example is "You're Darn Tootin'", which has clear degradation during the hat routine at the start of the brawl. The version in "The Lost Films of Laurel and Hardy" from Hal Roach has no such damage, and overall is a slightly better image. Similarly Roach's version of "Angora Love" is slightly better overall. The Roach series presents the films in the way they ought to have been presented here, no "artistic" egos in the way, but with good notes. It also has, unlike this collection, a selection of early films of Stan and Ollie separately (often, it must be said, not in the best condition). Roach also offers a version of "The Battle of the Century" with the missing section filled in with several stills and the editing script.The presenters had one very good idea, gathering on the one disc films which are connected in history or theme, although they have not succeeded entirely. For example, while "Love "em and Weep" and its successor "Chickens Come Home" are on the same disc, "Angora Love" and "Laughing Gravy" are not. Nevertheless, mostly they succeed, and there is considerable interest in being able to see together different treatments of similar themes.The inclusion of several films shot in foreign languages is the really novel aspect of this collection. There's the only known material in German of "Dick und Dof", a trailer for "Hinter Schloss und Riegel" (Pardon Us). There's "Les Carottiers", a combination for the French audience of "Be Big" and "Laughing Gravy". And there's a treasury of Spanish versions:"Noche de Duendes" - a combination of "The Laurel and Hardy Murder Case" and "Berth Marks"," Politiquerias" - an extended version of "Chickens Come Home",Tiembla y Titubea - an extended version of "Below Zero""Ladrones" - an extended version of "Night Owls""La Vida Nocturna" - an extended version of "Blotto""Los Calaveros" - a combination of "Be Big" and "Laughing Gravy" as in the French version "Les Carottiers"."Laughing Gravy" was originally included in the French and Spanish versions a whole reel longer (a different ending) than in the English version. This collection has the original English version plus a reconstituted version with the longer ending, recently rediscovered. All the foreign language films are on the same discs as their English language versions, except that "Les Carottiers" is on the same disc as "Laughing Gravy" in its original and reconstituted English language versions, and "Los Calaveros" on the same disc as "Be Big", a fair enough compromise for two foreign films from the same sources.The most remarkable feature perhaps is how well the boys do it. They are obviously foreigners speaking the languages, but it is done expressively and they seem to understand what they are saying. Using a foreign language does not seem to interfere with the fluidity of the performance.Precisely what training they had to undergo to achieve this would be most interesting to know. The apparent level of skill is the sort of thing which provokes wondering about untapped abilities and the possibility of other paths in life, until one quickly comes back to being glad they took the path they did (until 1940).The comparisons between versions are fascinating. The extra material is always interesting, though much of it is short sequences, little is real gold, and some, for example, the bulk of the extra material in "Politiquerias", does not involve Laurel and Hardy.As between the different versions, the performances are very similar, no doubt due to the boys' high level of experience and professionalism. Quite often, other actors are replaced by native speakers of the foreign language, which imports a degree of difference in their characters. "Ladrones" has Edgar Kennedy and James Finlayson also making their way in Spanish. Somehow I would like to have seen Finlayson's German, if he ever got to do it.If like me you find this collection, despite its faults, overwhelmingly irresistible, save yourself the agony of watching something on the last disc called "Laurel and Hardy, a tribute to the boys". It should be called "an insult to the boys". Only someone with truly no idea could call this a documentary. It's bleeding chunks of films interspersed with inane and uninformative comments.In the collection, many of the films are also in colorised versions. If like me you find the colours insipid and artificial, you simply watch the black and white. The insult to the boys, however, is there only in a colorised version, which is yet another reason to stay clear of it - many of your favourite scenes brutally amputated then decorated by Helena Rubenstein. Stan Laurel despaired at the way the films were cut down to fit into TV time slots. He would really have cried at this one.