"Mud and Sand" is a silent film starring Stan Laurel, that was filmed in 1922. Laurel plays a matador who makes a fool of a famous Spanish dancer. The dancer demands revenge and, in the end, kills the matador by throwing a concealed brick at him after a fight with the fiercest bull in Spain. The moral of the story, shown in the last scene, is: "If you want to live a long full life, cut out the bull!" The title spoofs the RUDOLPH VALENTINO film BLOOD AND SAND, and many scenes directly parody that film. "Before he was paired with Oliver Hardy in the late 1920s, Stan Laurel did solo shorts like this one, much in the style of Fatty Arbuckle or Buster Keaton. These days, Laurel's solo work is often forgotten or overlooked, but this parody is fine example. As a parody of the Valentino (see Vaselino) silent "Blood and Sand," it follows humorous rise to fame of a small time matador from Spain. The gags (and surprising ly, the puns) in this film remain timeless, and you can see echos of these gags in Monty Python, Bugs Bunny or Woody Allen. There is also an unusual breaking of the fourth wall on occasion, which is make this film seem far ahead of its time in terms of comedy. Like many of the comedians of his era, Laurel is an incredible acrobat and performs the physically demanding stunts wonderfully. While not as daring as Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton (for example, there a couple cases where a dummy stands in briefly for Laurel), the timing and expressions are played to the hilt." (Wilford B. Wolf) "It's in the scene where his last bull is loose in the street, before they get to the arena. The bull chases him down the street, and you can see something happens way back down there away from the camera, but you can't see what. I thought at the time, that stunt guy had a close call. Well, it wasn't a stunt man. Per a note at the IMDB, it was Stan Laurel, and he did almost get killed by the bull down there. Apparently the film crew told him the scene as bad and he'd have to reshoot it. They had very grotesque senses of humor back then. The bull in the last scene is a Hereford, and I may be wrong, but I don't think these pretty, placid animals have ever numbered among the fighting bulls of Spain. America was more rural back then and quite familiar with cattle breeds; this was probably one of the gags in the film." "This is one of Stan Laurel's best solo comedy's, before the 1927 teaming with Oliver Hardy. Laurel is a very good actor in the film, and provides good comedy. The best scene in the film is when Stan dances with Mae Laurel (his real-life common law wife), at the Cafe Espanol. Stan does silly dances that are funny, without you hearing the music." "Rheum rhabarbarum, Rhubarb is a species of plant in the family Polygonaceae. Rhubarb can be used as a strong laxative. Its roots have been used as a laxative for at least 5,000 years :) " See sequencies parodied by Stan Laurel in "Mud and Sand" at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBx37wqE4u4 Stan Laurel as Rhubarb Vaselino Leona Anderson as Filet de Sole Wheeler Dryden as Sapo Sam Kaufman as Humador Mae Laurel as Pavaloosky Julie Leonard as Caramel Directed Gilbert Pratt Produced by Broncho Billy Anderson Written by Tom Miranda For more information about art cinema : http://blog.ecla.de/tag/cinema-history/ Resources: wikipedia.org, archive.org New soundtrack and dubbing: CinemaHistoryChannel Music: Kevin Mac Leod (incompetch.com) licensed under Creative Commons licence: Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

• published: 14 Oct 2013