Silent Films: pre-team 1921-1927 Laurel and Hardy Silents 1927 Laurel and Hardy Silents 1928 Laurel and Hardy Silents 1929 Laurel and Hardy sound films (alphabetical order): A-Haunting We Will Go Air Raid Wardens Another Fine Mess Any Old Port! Atoll K (aka Utopia) Babes In Toyland Beau Hunks Be Big! Below Zero Berth Marks The Big Noise Block-Heads Blotto The Bohemian Girl Bonnie Scotland Brats The Bullfighters Busy Bodies Chickens Come Home - The Chimp A Chump At Oxford Come Clean County Hospital The Dancing Masters The Devil's Brother aka Fra Diavolo Dirty Work The Fixer Uppers The Flying Deuces Fra Diavolo aka The Devil's Brother Going Bye-Bye! Great Guns Helpmates Hog Wild The Hoose-Gow Jitterbugs Laughing Gravy The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case The Live Ghost Me And My Pal Men O'War The Midnight Patrol The Music Box Night Owls Nothing But Trouble Oliver The Eighth One Good Turn Our Relations Our Wife Pack Up Your Troubles Pardon Us Perfect Day Saps At Sea Scram! Sons of the Desert Swiss Miss Their First Mistake Them Thar Hills They Go Boom! Thicker Than Water Tit For Tat Towed In A Hole Twice Two Unaccustomed As We Are Utopia (aka Atoll K) Way Out West Specials: Cameos Cartoons For Love Or Mummy Laurel and Hardy Memories "Stan"

Dirty Work Year: 1933 Directed by: Lloyd French Duration: 18m DVD Availability: Try sendit.com (region 2 only) Viewpoint: "I have nothing to say!" So... Dirty Work. A short I had to do a review of, because it - by accident rather than design - became the basis of of my new site. It's not the most memorable Laurel and Hardy work, it's not even their funniest or my favourite. Yet... it has something. If the truth be told then I could have sworn I had some half-written notes for this one in my work folder, but I can't find them anywhere, so maybe I'd just planned to. I do remember writing an essay on this for a Film Studies course, where I half-jokingly suggested it was better than Battleship Potemkin. Naturally, I didn't pass, but FS students may like to look at the following sequence, which not only breaks the 1800 line, but completely turns it on its head: Yet I'm not suggesting Lloyd French was a slouch as a director just because he messed up one of the fundamentals on a rapid shoot between July and August '33. The opening shot (right), where the camera appears to pan through a bottle is exceptional. What's also notable about Dirty Work is how disturbing it can be. Like French's Oliver The Eighth, filmed four months later, it has an air of the macabre which could unsettle the very young, and still stays with me as a child memory when I watch it today. There is an undertone of many Laurel and Hardy films that sees disembodied voices, the "other" and literal anthromorphism create something quite, quite eerie. The aforementioned essay was, I admit, a pretty tedious affair as it had to centre on the editing technique, which for Dirty Work was performed by Bert Jordan. Highlighting the final scene with the Professor only, I noted that there were just 49 edits throughout the sequence until the end credits. (wake up). However, interestingly (?) most of the work was done by the actors, the camera only changing position just five times throughout. So the conclusion to Dirty Work is, in parlance, an affair where the mise-en-scene is king. When the Professor leaves the room, exit stage left, the shot remains on Stan and Ollie, allowing them to mirror us in wondering where he is and what he’s doing. Bear with me, because this does get vaguely interesting – what I discovered, slowing this sequence down and analysing it frame-by-frame (come on, I was trying to elevate Stan and Ollie to film study status alongside Einsenstein – my heart was in the right place) is that the distance between the Professor when he returns and Stan and Ollie is a cinematic deceit. Have another look – when Professor Noodle picks the egg out of the tank his arm is near the middle of said tank. Yet to suggest distance when we go to a mid-shot his arm is much further back than was previously displayed, with his right elbow balancing on the far edge. By editing from a left angle to a right side shot on the Professor it overlooks the discrepancy of where exactly he is standing. Another such occurrence is with Noodle’s wagging finger entering the left of Stan and Ollie’s medium close-up, which then cuts to a medium shot which shows the spatial displacement. The Professor even loses and regains his spectacles during reaction shots! This sort of thing probably happens all the time in Laurel and Hardy movies, it’s just unfortunate for Dirty Work that it was the one I was forced to analyse in this way. The 29th edited sequence in this selection has Stan climbing a ladder to peer after Ollie in the tank. The scene cuts to Stan, hands on the edge, leaning his body forward and peering over the side. This shot is then cut to a medium frame of Stan again leaning his body forward from the same initial slanting position. For me, though, the genuinely clever bit of editing occurs in the climax, which allows a soot-bedecked Stan to literally “ape” the chimp’s expressions. It's this element of the film - with its then-controversial acceptance of evolution - that makes it stick in the mind, though it should be noted that the rest of it, while typical, is a perfect exponent of Laurel and Hardy's slapstick, each joke logically refined. Appearing as chimney cleaners, Stan and Ollie naturally manage to demolish the house, with questions - such as why not use a shooting rifle to replace a broken extension? - running on from one another in a natural progression. A commendable Laurel and Hardy short, and one which this site owes a debt.