Clyde Bruckman
The Battle Of The Century

Henry Miller called it "the greatest comedy film ever made," and added that it came "after thousands of Mack Sennett comedies with pie-throwing." Mistake. In the history of cinema, there are 5 pie-in-the-face battles (note: battles, not single throws). The first was by C. Chaplin ("Behind the Screen", 1916), the last is by Blake Edwards ("The Great Race", 1965). The very first pie in the face captured on film dates back to the dawn of cinema, in 1909 ("Mr. Flip", a 4-minute short). In Italy, with our usual Spartan and somewhat slapdash style, pies have been thrown live, among others, at Maurizio Costanzo (in the '70s) and Pippo Baudo (in the '90s). But let's get back to the point.

The short in question is one of the most famous (even if, perhaps, not the most famous) of the Laurel and Hardy duo. Now, there could be a thousand anecdotes about the great comic pair: let's skip them, or this review would stretch for kilometers. They were two geniuses (Laurel in particular), they paved the way to worlds until then unexplored in the field of comedy; they too had a few missteps, a few forgettable films; they legitimized the man-man comic duo — unthinkable at the time (due to implied homosexual implications); they were the foundation of that style of comedy made of bumps and falls in which, however, nobody ever gets hurt—a style that gave rise to the later Warner cartoons. They were too soon replaced by the improbable team of Abbott and Costello; poorly advised in certain real estate investments; their popularity, in the '50s—years of decline—remained unchanged almost only in Italy (famous is the Genova tour); Ollie, poor fellow, ended his days thinner and (semi) paralyzed, Stan outlived him by a few years and, at the hospital, to the nun tending him, before saying goodbye to this world, he said: "Right now, I wish I could go skiing"; "Why, Mr. Laurel, do you know how to ski?", "No, but I’d rather ski than do what I’m doing now."

Back to us: part 2. "The Battle of the Century" is a ten-minute short released on December 31, 1927. Back then, these shorts were shown in theaters before the feature film on the program: there are tons of them by Chaplin and Keaton. But while those two were making features by the early '20s, Laurel and Hardy debuted in a "feature" only in 1931 with "Pardon Us." In this short Stan is a boxer, Ollie is his manager: the latter takes out a personal injury policy for his protégé, but Stan never gets hurt. End of reel one. Reel two: the two are wandering around and absent-mindedly toss a banana peel onto the sidewalk: a delivery boy carrying a tray of pies slips on it; from there, a gigantic battle erupts involving passersby of every class, age, and stature. It's silent: you've been warned.

The first reel, set in the world of boxing, is funny, but the epic pie fight sequence, which goes on for almost five minutes, is a delight. Seemingly, but only seemingly, simple and repetitive, in reality it's much more complex to execute than it appears, and—not an irrelevant detail—it's absolutely hilarious. Even today, almost a hundred years later. Fast-paced rhythm, frantic editing, comic gags in abundance: Leo McCarey's screenplay leaves no escape. Yet, the full ten minutes are only the skeleton of a short that has been, for the most part, lost.

Robert Youngson (a director of the classic Hollywood era) in 1957 put together a documentary called "The Golden Age Of Comedy" and, arbitrarily, cut almost all of the first reel by 8 minutes (the sequence in which Ollie takes out the insurance, for example, is missing) and chopped the ending without any logical resolution. In fact, for many years, it was thought that even the boxing match sequence had been lost and that only the long pie fight survived. In 1970, the MOMA in New York saw the rediscovery of half of the first reel by some kind soul. The missing sequences, those irretrievably lost, today are replaced by title cards and photos: a real shame, although, fortunately, it didn't turn out like more than half of Lon Chaney's filmography, almost all gone forever. Plot twist: in 2015 an American collector also found the missing ending of the second reel (who knows where he dug it up), and on October 9th of that same year, at the "Giornate del Muto" in Pordenone, it was possible to view almost the complete short with a total of 18 out of the original 20 minutes (only a couple of minutes are missing, and unless another collector emerges, these are probably lost for good). Unfortunately, the versions currently in circulation are still the pre-2015 ones, but that's all right, sooner or later something will move: let’s give it time.

The production is typically Hal Roach: I believe the duo really gave their absolute best during that slice of years from 1927 to 1937, which saw a string of immortal masterpieces (above all the definitive and unforgettable "The Music Box", 1932). And, in the end, even the "villain" Youngson can be rehabilitated after all these years: it’s true he cut everything without narrative logic, but he did have a visual logic; the deleted parts, after all, were also those deteriorated by time and thus no longer usable, before the arrival of modern remastering technologies. In the mid-1980s, RAI aired the short, in a crooked form, with a pointless commentary (since, after all, it’s a silent) entrusted to Giorgio Ariani and Enzo Garinei.

The whole thing is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcByLOt2Y9U