La bataille du siècle

In its original form, this was probably one of the best of all of the Laurel & Hardy short comedies. It's too bad that it no longer exists in complete form, but what remains is still very entertaining. It has an even better variety of gag material than usual, with excellent timing and a good supporting cast to help out. The prize fight sequence is a hilarious take-off on the controversial Dempsey-Tunney fight that at the time was still fresh in everybody's mind. The pie fight sequence is still as good as or better than the many attempts to imitate it. It combines escalating chaos with plenty of creative gags. The now-missing portions of the film seem to have tied everything else together very nicely. The Nostalgia Archive reconstruction at least gives you some idea of what it would have been like in its original form, by using the continuity scripts. And even in the fragmented form that remains, it's very funny.

This is the first comment of a series of films where I'm attempting to connect two legendary comedy teams: Laurel & Hardy and Abbott & Costello. For this initial one-The Battle of the Century-we're at a time when Hal Roach's duo of a thin Englishman and a heavyset Georgia man were just starting their creative chemistry to an adoring public while a young and thin man (at the time) in his twenties from Patterson, New Jersey, was just attempting to break out in Hollywood any way he can which includes stunt work and occasional extra parts. It's here that Lou Costello makes an appearance in the audience of a boxing match between Stan and Noah Young with Ollie being Stan's manager. Half the time watching I was a little distracted looking for Costello but I still managed to laugh at Stan's antics in the boxing ring. I especially loved his dance at the beginning. I half wondered if Lou thought of this sequence when he did his own comic fights in later A & C vehicles. It certainly was amusing enough for the first reel which for years afterward was considered lost until 1979 when Richard Feiner managed to find it. It's the second part with the legendary pie fight that this film's reputation rests. Good thing when compilation producer Robert Youngston was looking for clips to include in his first project on classic silent comedy-The Golden Age of Comedy-he found what was a decomposing second reel and managed to preserve the last 5 or so minutes of it. Among the classic supporting actors long associated with L & H that appeared in this sequence was Charlie Hall and, in perhaps the most iconic moment at the end, Anita Garvin. The Nostalgia Archive video tape that I watched this one on actually had two versions on it. The first presented the first reel intact before going to the pie sequence. The second had the first reel again before going to a surviving script that details another sequence with Eugene Palette in which he sells Ollie an insurance on Stan. From there, Ollie then tries to get Stan to slip on a banana peel to collect the money before a cop gets mixed up in it. With the script, some stills, and then the Youngston-edited sequence, we get an as complete as possible version of this long truncated short. In summary, The Battle of the Century is well worth viewing for L & H fans as well as Lou Costello completists. Update-9/24/11: I just watched this again at an outdoor screening at the Baton Rouge Gallery with musical accompaniment by The Incense Merchants, whose contemporary stylings add to the fun immensely, but with the stills and script pages representing the missing scenes deleted. At least one female member of the audience behind me laughed as loud as I did. She must have been as much of an L & H fan as me!

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival screened a nearly complete nicely restored copy of The Battle of the Century this weekend (6/4/16). Except for the still-missing part of reel one (the scene with the boys and Eugene Palette in the park), the film is now complete. And the pie fight is all that all of us have hoped for all of these years! Admittedly the newly found material is more of the same, but the same is wonderful! The new print was accomplished by Lobster Films with help from MOMA, the Library of Congress and Blackhawk films. I can find no information about a release so let's start a ground swell for a DVD copy. Please? We're begging you!

Though parts of the movie are missing, "Battle of the Century" contains more than enough footage to establish that Laurel and Hardy are comfortable meshing together. The Hal Roach/ H. M. Walker script opens with Laurel in the boxing ring managed by Hardy. Though Stanley has his opponent down on the ground through a lucky hit, his refusal to stay in a neutral corner during the count allowed his foe to regain consciousness and quickly turn the match around. Later on, the two find themselves in the middle of an outrageous pie fight on a city street where literally thousands of pies are hurled in people's faces.

It had been reported a record 3,000 pies were tossed in that "Battle of the Century" sequence. One commentator explained the success of the film rested on the timing of the pie throws. "The camera lingers on the faces of people before they get pied. The guy in the dentist chair, the snooty lady looking through her lorgnettes. We're laughing before they get pied, because we know what's coming to them and they don't." Also, as everyone gets covered with pie goop, all social distinctions are erased. The rich, the cops, ministers, professors, all descend to the level of Laurel and Hardy, who began the entire mess. And pies, like cotton puff balls, are harmless objects to throw and be hit with.

The new pairing of an English comic and a Southerner from Georgia went on to make over 100 films together, working consistently on the stage and in film until 1950.

I first wrote a review for this Laurel & Hardy film over a decade ago...back when only a truncated version of the short was known to exist. Because it was missing so much (other than the famous pie fight), I said it was really impossible to adequately review and score "The Battle of the Century". However, since then something wonderful has happened which has fortunately happened with many other silents....nearly all the rest of the movie was found! I think much of this is because with social media and the internet, many old films in pieces are being reassembled and discovered. A great example are the Vitaphone shorts. Until recently, most were missing their sound/musical tracks but an internet group has managed to reunite the sound tracks with many of the films. Now I am not saying that this Laurel & Hardy short is 100% complete like these other shorts....but much more of it exists now than a decade or so ago.

The film begins with Stanley boxing a guy who might just kill him. After losing the fight (naturally), Ollie has Stanley heavily insured--and you presume he's going to arrange some accident to happen to his 'pal'. In the meantime, a minor street altercation results in a HUGE pie fight--probably the biggest one in film history.

Overall, what's there is quite funny...and worth seeing. Will it ever be 100% complete? We might just soon see.