The first outing in which they are officially billed to the public as Laurel & Hardy demonstrates the extent to which the duo were the real creative force behind their films. If Fred Guiol’s direction holds the story together, the leads seize every opportunity to build a steady crescendo of gags. In The Second Hundred Years it is a simple change of costume that determines the course of events. They begin in a novel guise as jailbirds, with haircuts that they retained for a successive cameo in the Max Davidson vehicle Call of the Cuckoo; but it only takes a change of outfit for them to pass themselves off as house painters, or the acquisition of two elegant suits for them to become unlikely French officials, playing on simple stereotypes (co-authored by the ever- faithful James Finlayson). In the midst of this orchestrated chaos, the sequence in which they attempt to prove their credentials by painting the entire city white produces in socially challenging speeches (both within and without the diegesis) awkwardly disguised as misunderstandings.

Alessandro Criscitiello