NFR Project: Laurel and Hardy in 'Big Business' (1929)

Big Business

Dir: James W. Horne, Leo McCarey

Scr: Stan Laurel, Leo McCarey

Pho: George Stevens

Ed: Richard C. Currier

Premiere: April 20, 1929

19 min.

Laurel and Hardy made many comedies, both silent and sound, but few have reached the peak of perfection we find in Big Business.

All the elements that defined them as a comedy team are here. Stan Laurel is the innocent, oblivious boob, and Oliver Hardy is his domineering partner who turns out to be just as dumb as his pal, and who often pays the biggest price in pain and humiliation. Together they find themselves in situations that expose their combined shortcomings, getting themselves in trouble deeper with every step. They can’t do anything right.

One of top collections of comedy minds worked to make this memorable film. Future Oscar winners George Stevens and Leo McCarey were behind the camera, and Laurel and McCarey crafted an exemplary plot. The camera work takes in only what is necessary to propel the story forward. This economical, streamlined kind of filmmaking foregrounds the priceless expressions that slowly make their way across the boys’ confused countenances.

Here the dazzing duo are peddling Christmas trees door to door. After alienating one potential customer, and receiving hammer blows from another, they make their way to the home of their usual nemesis, Jimmy Finlayson.

Finlayson was the perfect foil for the boys – short, balding, mustachioed, and perpetually irascible, possessing the best angry squint in the business. They try to sell him a tree – he declines. Slamming the door, he catches their tree in it. The two must ring the doorbell again to get it back. This they do, only now Stan’s coat is caught in the door . . .

What follows is a perfectly timed escalation of absurd, slapstick violence. The doorbell is rung, again and again. Finlayson cuts up their tree. Stan pries off the address numbers on the house. Finlayson retaliates. Slowly and deliberately, it’s a tit-for-tat that escalates until Finlayson is frantically dismantling their car and the boys are smashing his house to bits.

All this proceeds with a kind of cool, demented logic. An offense is perpetrated, everyone pauses for a moment to reflect, then the next and crazier act of violence takes place, as each side tries to outdo the other. The three draw a crowd, who follows them from house to car as the trio engage in an orgy of destruction. Finally, a cop comes by and stops the mayhem.

The officer tries to find out who started it, which reduces the trio, and the cop himself, to tears. Everyone makes up, and Stan gives Finlayson a cigar. The boys seem contrite, but when reveal that they’re not, the cop chases them down the street.

In comedy, underneath the veneer of adult life lie the raging emotions of children. Stan and Ollie’s antics soon manifest them in those around them, bringing everyone back to primitive stage of tantrums and foul play and exploding everyday reality into a kind of glorious chaos. We root for the duo, as we see ourselves in them. We laugh because we know their best efforts are doomed to failure, and we know that, despite themselves, these clowns will survive, only to get in trouble in a new adventure.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Black and Tan.