Customer Reviews

The Golden Age of Comedy

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First, the previous reviewer doesn't know what he's talking about. I've owned this film for over two decades, and I can attest that both Ben Turpin & Buster Keaton are in this videotape. The Keaton footage is soley from "Cops", while there's several clips from Turpin's films.

Second, the whole film is excellent, if marred only by dated references (like comparing Jean Harlow to "today's Marilyn Monroe"!) The film devotes a lot of screen-time to Laurel & Hardy, and deservedly so. I remember first watching this on PBS in the early 1980's, and I never laughed so hard in my life.

When this came out in the mid 1950s there was very little first-rate comedy to be had, vintage or contemporary. This was a welcome surprise. Audiences laughed and laughed and laughed almost continually, and I'm not just saying that. In those days films were run on a continuing basis around the clock which means one could watch the film as many times as they pleased. I often stayed on for three or four show (at Baltimore's Little Theatre), and I enjoyed the funny business as much as I did being in the company of hundreds of happy personages. The only other time audiences of the period laughed so hard was for Billy Wilder's "SOME LIKE IT HOT." As I said: It never fails to please!

This is probably Robert Youngson's finest compilation supported by a grand music score which illustrates how such scores best punctuate and extend the hilarity . . . Anybody who wants to compose music for silent films should use this as a guide.

I remember this movie from when I was a kid. I never laughed so hard in my life. It is not nearly as funny to me as it was then. I remember a lot of other comedians being in the film (Ben Turpin, Buster Keaton, etc.) that have been cut out of this film. To me, that made the video a rip off because it had been edited down to leave them out.