classicsoncall
I've been catching quite a few of Laurel and Hardy's film shorts lately, both silent and talkie, and one item of note for this picture is that there seems to be a fair amount of close-ups of the Boys that weren't standard for most of their work. This is most likely due to the limited space in which most of the story takes place, though it's not much of a story when you get right down to it. Stan and Ollie go through an inordinate amount of contortions in order to get ready to take a nap in their upper train berth. It actually gets to be very physical and I had to wonder if they might have suffered any amount of pain or bruises while falling down a small ladder or inadvertently sticking a foot in each other's face. In the meantime, the rest of the passengers on board revel in tearing each other's clothes off due to an unintended accident initiated by Stan. A lot of this was pretty standard stuff for Laurel and Hardy, and the version I saw courtesy of Turner Classics had their traditional 'Cuckoo Song' opening the program. As this is considered by many to be their first talking picture, I don't know if the Cuckoo music was there from the beginning or added later, but it was a neat reminder of the way I remembered these shorts when I was a kid watching them in the Fifties. Great memories and great to see them all over again.
Michael_Elliott
Berth Marks (1929) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Laurel and Hardy are a vaudeville team who are trying to catch a train so that they can reach their next gig. They barely catch the train but once on there they run into one problem after another with the biggest being trying to get up in their bed so that they can sleep.BERTH MARKS was the duo's first sound film, although it was also shown in a silent version in theaters that hadn't yet upgraded their systems. For the most part this is a mildly amusing comedy but at the same time there's no question that it falls well short of classic Laurel and Hardy films. The biggest problem is the fact that there's really not too many laughs and the one joke pretty much takes up the majority of the running time. This joke has the boys trying to get into their bed but constantly failing for one reason or another. This here just isn't funny enough to warrant it taking up most of the running time.
JoeytheBrit
I'm a huge fan of Laurel & Hardy but found this to be hard going even though it was only twenty minutes long. It's easy to see that the boys aren't used to - and are uneasy - working with sound, a fact demonstrated by long sequences played out in near total silence. Much of the dialogue between them seems to be improvised and sounds forced and unconvincing.Added to these problems with sound, the routines involved just aren't funny. The sequence in which the boys struggle to prepare for bed in a cramped sleeping berth on a train seem to go one forever (without raising even the ghost of a smile).This has to go down as one of their weakest efforts - and that includes the stuff they did for 20th Century Fox in the forties.
Ira Ratner
I just recently got into collecting really old films in their original format--16mm--to be viewed on a projector. And I just won a print of this on eBay, to arrive in a few days.I'm curious how the experience will differ watching it blown up on a large screen in my backyard... with the noise of the projector...and those real grey tones and unaltered sound.As opposed to just watching a DVD of it.Yeah, progress is great, but I have a feeling that watching it via film is gonna feel more like living a little bit of history. When it arrives and I finally view it, I'll give a review.But I have a feeling that it's going to be magic.
AD
