Cast: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, James Finlayson Review by Colin Dibben
This collection brings together the silent Laurel and Hardy shorts produced in 1929: Liberty, Wrong Again, That’s My Wife, Big Business, Unaccustomed As We Are, Double Whoopee, Berth Marks, Bacon Grabbers and Angora Love.
These are all really impressive films, but the sky-high antics in Liberty are justly famous and the whimsical refrain “the rich do things the other way round” in the surreal Wrong Again plugs into bigger themes in the films, such as bullying, social climbing, snobbery, the average person’s relation to the law and other headscratching notions. Then there are the demolition derbies of Big Business and Bacon Grabbers, in which the duo go head to head and then mano a mano with proud homeowners who have pissed them off.
This time around, I was also very impressed by the intertitles, short and pithy and spot on, and usually written by one H. M. Walker.
The films – on the whole – look notably better than the unrestored versions. But when these artefacts are almost 100 years old, does restoration add much – or simply detract from the patina of age?
Whether you think this package is worth the money will probably depend at least in part on the extras.
These include:
- Limited edition collector’s booklet featuring newly written notes on each film by writer and comedian Paul Merton and a new essay on frequent Laurel and Hardy collaborator James Finlayson by silent cinema expert Chris Grosvenor
- New audio commentaries on Liberty and Berth Marks by film writer Chris Seguin and Kyp Harness, author of The Art of Laurel and Hardy: Graceful Calamity in the Films
- New audio commentaries on Double Whoopee, Unaccustomed As We Are and Wrong Again by film historian and writer David Kalat
- New audio commentaries on Big Business and Angora Love by silent film accompanist Neil Brand
- New audio commentaries on That’s My Wife and Bacon Grabbers by Glenn Mitchell, author of The Laurel and Hardy Encyclopedia
- A choice of scores in most cases
- 1929 sound shorts They Go Boom! and The Hoose-Gow
- New documentary by David Cairns and Fiona Watson
Laurel and Hardy: The Silent Years, 1929 is out on Blu-ray from Eureka! Video on 20 July 2026.
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