The Music Box (1932) - film review

With their combined savings of three dollars and eighty cents Stan and Ollie set themselves up in business as removal men.  Their first job proves to be something of a challenge.  They are to deliver a piano to the house of a renowned professor, but unfortunately the house is situated at the top of a huge flight of steps.  After several mishaps, which see the boxed up piano careering back down the steps as though it had a life of its own, the boys finally manage to get the piano to the house of its owner.  Unfortunately, there is no one at home, and so Ollie suggests they hoist the piano up through an open upstairs window and then carry it downstairs.  Nothing could be easier.  It soon becomes apparent that Stan and Ollie have chosen the wrong metier.  They should have been in the demolition business.  Just how will the professor react when he sees his living room in ruins...?

The Music Box has the distinction of being the only Laurel and Hardy film to have been honoured with an Academy Award, in the category of Best Short Subject, Comedy.   This partly explains why the film is often held up as a prime example of the duo’s work and is frequently cited as their greatest film.  Although the film is certainly one of Stan and Ollie’s better offerings, the jury is still out on whether it is actually their best film.  The sheer enormity of their oeuvre (72 shorts films and 23 features) means that it is unlikely there will ever be unanimous agreement as to which is their best film.  The only thing that can be said with certainty is that, no matter what mood you are in, The Music Box will make you laugh, and laugh out loud.

The film consists of two simple yet brilliantly conceived gags, both of which are perfectly orchestrated and guaranteed to reduce an audience to hysterics.  The first involves the boys trying to carry a piano up an enormous flight of stairs; the second then sees them attempt to get the piano into its owner’s house, causing as much devastation as is humanly possible without resorting to an exchange of nuclear missiles.  The first gag is a reworking of Stan and Ollie’s 1927 film Hats Off, one of their earliest collaborations, in which they carry a washing machine up a flight of stairs.  Sadly, no print of Hats Off is known to exist, although photographic stills of the film provide a valuable visual record of it.

The sequence with the flight of steps is a superlative example of the repeat gag.  After the third attempt you begin to wonder whether Stan and Ollie will ever fulfil their mission and get the piano to its destination.  Yet the gag never becomes wearisome.  Every time the piano makes its descent, the reaction is not a here-we-go-again groan but a full-blown belly laugh.  Of course, there is a corker of a punch-line to the gag.  When the boys finally get the piano to the top of the steps, they decide to carry it back down again because they learn there is an easier way to deliver it to the house.  Just why do they do this?  Presumably so as not to appear stupid.

But the fun does not stop here.  More hilarious hi-jinks are in store.  Ollie’s penchant for over-complicating matters leads to possibly the film’s best gag.  Having hauled the piano up through an upstairs window, Ollie comes tumbling down, landing in a pond (for the umpteenth time), just before the piano comes crashing down on top of him (again for the umpteenth time).  In fact poor Ollie is subjected to so much physical abuse (he is squashed, drenched and electrocuted repeatedly) that you end up believing he is made of rubber.  Is The Music Box Laurel and Hardy’s greatest film?  Probably not, but it is mightily funny and could well turn you into a L&H fan if you weren’t beforehand.

© Brian Evans 2010

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