When the Lumiere brothers first started exhibiting motion pictures in the 1890's, one of their first subjects was train coming into a train station. Their audience dashed for the exits, feeling the train would run them over. This seems silly to us now but it gives an indication of the adjustments to our thinking that are necessary to enjoy a film.
At the end of "County Hospital" there is a singularly ineffective sequence involving a wild car ride through crowded city streets: Laurel is driving but is falling asleep due to a misplaced hypodremic needle. Oliver is in the back seat and can do nothing but hope for the best. The entire scene is back-projected, save for one shot of the car skidding and twisting around on an oil slick on what appears to be a suburban street with no traffic: then we go back to the crowded city street being projected behind the boys. It's not wild at all because it's totally unreal, like a carnival ride. In the old silent days, (before there were unions and ordinances against filing dangerous stunts on the streets), this would have been done much better.
Today it looks ridiculous and has no comic impact at all, except for the amusing ending where the car had been punched into an L-shape that can only go around in circles. But was it seen differently then? Did 1932 audiences look at this and accept it at face value and thus find it funnier than it looks today? These days, almost no back projection is used because we've trained our eyes to recognize it. (The sequence with Grace Kelly and Cary Grant in "To Catch a Thief" doesn't work as well now as it must have in 1955 for this reason).
Frankly, I like L&H's verbal humor more than their physical humor. They were among the first comics to create humor through their personalities rather than the crude slapstick that had dominated the silent cinema and this was accommodated, rather than inhibited, by sound.
At the end of "County Hospital" there is a singularly ineffective sequence involving a wild car ride through crowded city streets: Laurel is driving but is falling asleep due to a misplaced hypodremic needle. Oliver is in the back seat and can do nothing but hope for the best. The entire scene is back-projected, save for one shot of the car skidding and twisting around on an oil slick on what appears to be a suburban street with no traffic: then we go back to the crowded city street being projected behind the boys. It's not wild at all because it's totally unreal, like a carnival ride. In the old silent days, (before there were unions and ordinances against filing dangerous stunts on the streets), this would have been done much better.
Today it looks ridiculous and has no comic impact at all, except for the amusing ending where the car had been punched into an L-shape that can only go around in circles. But was it seen differently then? Did 1932 audiences look at this and accept it at face value and thus find it funnier than it looks today? These days, almost no back projection is used because we've trained our eyes to recognize it. (The sequence with Grace Kelly and Cary Grant in "To Catch a Thief" doesn't work as well now as it must have in 1955 for this reason).
Frankly, I like L&H's verbal humor more than their physical humor. They were among the first comics to create humor through their personalities rather than the crude slapstick that had dominated the silent cinema and this was accommodated, rather than inhibited, by sound.