Grandi Affari (Big Business, James W. Horne, 1929). Laurel & Hardy e l'invenzione della lentezza

Distributed in American theatres in the spring of 1929, "Big Business" is the last silent masterpiece by Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy and one of the essential titles for those who want to approach their work. Still today it is a unrivalled example of slow burn, the exhausting progression of gags towards the foreseeable final catastrophe: a technique that over time will become the trademark of the couple.
This volume - the first in Italy entirely dedicated to "Big Business" - offers an accurate analysis of the formal and compositional values of the film, as well as defining the social and productive context in which it was made: on the one hand the United States on the eve of the Wall Street collapse, on the other hand the progressive consolidation of the Studio System to the detriment of the independents. In the space of twenty minutes, behind the innocuous appearance of a film comedy, not only do Laurel and Hardy expose the neurosis of the American middle class, literally tearing apart its fetishes (home and car), but they even manage to collapse, in an irresistible crescendo of comic ideas, the classic Hollywood narrative and the normalizing ideology of the Majors.