Stan & Ollie

There’s a moment right at the start of this incredibly moving film where Stan Laurel (Steve Coogan) and Oliver Hardy (John C. Reilly) walk through the back of a 1930s movie set. One of the staff does the Ollie hair-pull manoeuvre and Stan Laurel dutifully removes his hat and becomes his comedy self for a second. And it is Steve Coogan being Stan Laurel being Laurel’s on-screen persona—absolutely incredible.

The pair are two very different men, but Laurel and Hardy at that time were among the most famous in the world. As a pair they worked like a comedy machine: carefully choreographed slapstick comedy as well as traditional song and dance. A famous dance sequence is recreated before the drama sets in: Stan wants to get more money from the studio because he feels that they’re not as valued as, say, Charlie Chaplin. Oliver Hardy was on a different contract, so when he went on to make a film without Laurel, a rift between the pair set in and lasted for decades.

The film picks up in postwar Britain, the two are on a tour whilst Stan Laurel waits for money to come together for a new film for the two of them. Holed up in a hotel up north somewhere, Laurel and Hardy perform in second- and third-rate venues, to sparse audiences. In between times Stan Laurel is working out scenes for the planned movie, a Robin Hood spoof. When Laurel is running lines with Hardy you can see the fire that made them such a comedy success, and you see the love that the two men have for one another. They’re ‘supported’ through the tour by theatrical impresario Bernard Delfont (Rufus Jones), who is patronising and relatively ineffective.

The pair end up in London and are joined by their wives. Lucille Hardy (Shirley Henderson) is reserved and protective; Ida Laurel (Nina Areanda) clearly thinks everything that’s happening is beneath her husband. The four of them have to shake hands with a lot of people who’re really not terribly interested in their comedy, and to make things worse Oliver’s health is fading.

The story reaches some profound conclusions about two people who’ve spent their working lives together, who owe each other, who can’t exist without each other, but who don’t get on. The evocation of postwar Britain—the seaside at Worthing and of course London, as well as a spectacularly grim inn—is all superb, and the Savoy looks as though it’s not changed. It’s the performances, though, that make this film so incredible. Steve Coogan always looks like Steve Coogan but it was easy to see him as the comic Stan Laurel; and John C. Reilly, in a fat-suit, cleverly evokes Oliver Hardy to perfection. Less well known are the wives, but Shirley Henderson is one of the nation’s best character actors who can imbue a mood using only her face.

This is a wonderful film, with a couple of incredible actors recreating a comedy pairing from almost a Century ago. In the days of three channels, Laurel & Hardy shorts were a regular feature on television—and maybe those who were too young at the time didn’t really appreciate them. It’s also a film about film history, and those are always especially lovingly recreated pieces. But it works at the level of being a study of a long relationship and how difficult and how rewarding that can be. Perfection.