Berth Marks

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Berth Marks
Directed by Lewis R. Foster
Produced by Hal Roach
Written by Leo McCarey
H.M. Walker
Starring Stan Laurel
Oliver Hardy
Cinematography Len Powers
Editing by Richard C. Currier
Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s) June 1, 1929
Running time 19 min.
Country Flag of the United States United States
Language silent film
English intertitles
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Berth Marks is a 1929 short comedy starring Laurel and Hardy. The story involves Stan and Ollie as two musicians attempting to travel by train to Potsville.It was only their second sound film,but a silent version was also made for cinemas at the time that were not equipped to show talkies.

Contents

[edit] Cast


[edit] Film analysis

Although not highly regarded among Laurel and Hardy enthusiasts today, Berth Marks is a technically accomplished film considering its production early in the team's sound films. The opening scene - in which Ollie listens patiently to a stationmaster rattling off a long, garbled list of destinations - shows that even at this very early stage the filmmakers were conscious of how sound could be deployed in new comedic ideas. (This scene inspired a similar train station bit at the beginning of Jacques Tati's 1953 film Mr. Hulot's Holiday, in which a throng of holidaying tourists must listen to the announcement of trains at a station, and follow the directions to the correct platform - which ends up being incorrect). The team exhibits a fine sense of timing in their reaction shots to this gag, which is repeated twice, and in the subsequent flurry of activity after the stationmaster, having nearly moved out of earshot, adds "...and Pottsville!" to his list of placenames and spurs Stan and Ollie into action.

The scenes aboard the train, although they grow redundant through lack of comedic variation (a lack the team would address and improve upon radically in subsequent sound shorts) nevertheless has some fine moments. Although dialogue is at a minimum in most of the train scenes, consciousness of sound film's possibilities for understatement and irony permeates what lines are placed in the film: the conductor offering his opinion of Laurel and Hardy's vaudeville act, based on their trainbound ineptitude, "Well I'll bet you're good!", or Ollie's exasperated "I wish I'd checked you with the baggage!" to Stan, after Stan has tumbled repeatedly out of the upper berth. Such ambiguities resident in speech tones could not have been possible in silent films, and Laurel and Hardy would amplify such possibilities as they became more familiar with the medium of sound. Sound too is used to enhance visual gags: the ripping of clothing offscreen, for example, or the sound effect emphasizing the final gag, in which Stan, running away from Ollie, has his hat knocked off at a great distance by a rock Ollie has thrown. The film's emphasis on pantomime also yields some amusing moments: Stan searching his pockets after Ollie questions him "Where's the [bass] fiddle?" is just one.

[edit] Production Notes

Action and dialogue scripts written circa mid-April 1929. Filmed circa April 20-27, 1929. Released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer June 1, 1929. Reissued 1936 with new musical scoring added to introductory scenes. (Source: Randy Skretvedt, Laurel and Hardy: The Magic Behind the Movies).

The train scenes, including outtakes unused in Berth Marks, were spliced into foreign-language versions of The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case the following year. These scenes were combined with new footage, utilizing actors fluent in the languages appropriate to the foreign-language versions. Laurel and Hardy's scenes from Berth Marks were overdubbed to match the required languages.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links


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