Laurel and Hardy : The Silent Years (1928)

SYNOPSIS

The most celebrated comedy duo in cinema history, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy formed their decades-long partnership in the late 1920s in a series of silent shorts produced at the Hal Roach Studios. Having developed their on-screen chemistry in the likes of Do Detectives Think?, Putting Pants on Philip and The Battle of the Century throughout 1927, Laurel & Hardy forged on as a double act in the last years of the silent era and into the age of talking pictures.

This collection brings together the silent Laurel & Hardy shorts produced during 1928, as their partnership began to gather steam: Leave ’em Laughing sees Stan desperately seeking treatment for a toothache; You’re Darn Tootin’ follows the pair as they turn their hand to busking; in From Soup to Nuts, the boys are hired as waiters for an upper-class dinner party; and in Early to Bed, Ollie gets to enjoy the highlife for himself when he inherits a fortune and buys an opulent mansion… but Stan soon finds ways to lower its market value. This collection also features the first Hal Roach film to officially bill Laurel & Hardy as a duo: Should Married Men Go Home?, in which a relaxing trip to the golf course quickly spirals into chaos.

The Masters of Cinema series is honoured to present some of the finest (and funniest) films Laurel & Hardy ever made – newly restored in 2K resolution from the finest available materials – in a special two-disc Blu-ray edition for the first time in the UK.

SPECIAL FEATURES

Limited Edition [2000 copies]
Limited edition O-Card slipcase featuring new artwork by Scott Saslow [2000 copies]
1080p HD presentations on Blu-ray from 2K restorations of Leave ‘em Laughing, The Finishing Touch, From Soup to Nuts, You’re Darn Tootin’, Their Purple Moment, Should Married Men Go Home?, Early to Bed, Two Tars, Habeas Corpus and We Faw Down
Region Coding : A/B/C
Scores by a variety of silent film composers
New audio commentaries on Leave ’em Laughing and From Soup to Nuts by film historian and writer David Kalat
New audio commentaries on The Finishing Touch and Habeas Corpus by Patrick Vasey, editor of The Laurel & Hardy Magazine and host of The Laurel & Hardy Podcast
New audio commentaries on Early to Bed and We Faw Down by film writer Chris Seguin and Kyp Harness, author of The Art of Laurel & Hardy: Graceful Calamity in the Films
New audio commentaries on Should Married Men Go Home? and Two Tars by Glenn Mitchell, author of The Laurel and Hardy Encyclopedia
New audio commentaries on You’re Darn Tootin’ and Their Purple Moment by silent film accompanist Neil Brand
Alternate Skeets Alquist score on The Finishing Touch, newly restored by Stephen C. Horne
New interview with Neil Brand
United We Fall – brand new feature-length documentary by David Cairns and Fiona Watson
Now I’ll Tell One (1927) – surviving fragment of a Charley Chase two-reeler featuring Laurel & Hardy with optional audio commentary by Chris Seguin and Glenn Mitchell
Robert Youngson Tribute – new featurette by Scott MacGillivray, author of Laurel & Hardy: From the Forties Forward
Let ’em Rip, Out of Step, The Car Wreckers and A Right Mess – Super 8 cut downs of Laurel & Hardy shorts
Stan Laurel Home Movies – rarely seen home movie footage
Stills Galleries
A limited edition collector’s booklet featuring newly written notes on each film by writer and comedian Paul Merton and new essays by silent cinema expert Imogen Sara Smith and film historian Sheldon Hall [2000 copies]

Laurel and Hardy : The Silent Years (1928) (Blu-ray)

£28.99

TECHNICAL DETAILS

TECHNICAL DETAILS

SYNOPSIS

SPECIAL FEATURES

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