Starring Larry Semon.
Featuring Oliver Hardy, Ann Hastings, and Frank Alexander.
Directed by Larry Semon and Norman Taurog.
Synopsis
"The Dumb-Bell"
"The Sawmill" begins with a bunch of employees working with the boss of the sawmill (Al Thompson) cutting timber. The boss's daughter (Kathleen O'Connor) arrives, bearing gifts of luncheon and smiles for all.
Well, except the bully foreman (Oliver Hardy), whom she doesn't like much.
Just as lunch is being delivered, the owner of the mill (Frank Alexander) rocks up with his daughter (Ann Hastings) to check out how the sawing is going.
We meet Larry, the dumb-bell, pipe in mouth, busily rowing along the tracks astride a huge tree bark.
The boss's daughter brings Larry lunch, much to the chagrin of the foreman, with Larry and the foreman having a bit of a scrap.
After his fight with the foreman, Larry is chased by more of the mill workers where he inadvertently flips a wheelbarrow full of paint over the owner.
Eventually he avoids capture by adopting a disguise.
Further run-ins involve buzz saws and falling trees - with Semon almost crushed to death on several occasions - before Larry decides that enough is enough and he seeks redress from his clumsy colleagues.
This involves chasing them all around the sawmill, amongst the trees, and on water, with Semon launching himself off a house in the process.
The madcap chase comes to a conclusion just as the owner, the foreman, the boss, and his daughter are sitting down to lunch.
In trying to get more paint, Semon is shot at by an angry co-worker, and with the bucket full of paint falling onto the head of the foreman, lunch is ruined and the owner isn't too happy.
He's made more unhappy when Semon's bungling means that a shedload of paint is spilt over the lunch party.
In fact, he's so unhappy that he fires the foreman and the workers.
Larry, meanwhile, attempts to seduce the owner's daughter in the owner's home. The shenanigans that ensue see the owner receive a shot in the backside because his dog sets off a gun (!); Larry and the owner's daughter hide in a safe; and the irate foreman returns with a gun to settle scores with the owner.
Thanks to the ingenious canine, who manages to divert the gun powder laid by the foreman away from the owner's safe, the safe is safe from the ensuing blast.
However, the house isn't; it's blown to smithereens.
Larry and the owner's daughter emerge from the safety of the safe in one piece, but it isn't long before Larry is clobbered over the head by the foreman's cronies and the owner's daughter kidnapped.
Larry's daring attempt to save her results in both of them high-up in one of the trees, armed with just a rope.
With all the grace of Tarzan and Jane, Larry and the owner's daughter (who I might just call 'Jane' from now on) swing from the rope which has been lassoed over a metal structure, and fly through the air before landing in a lake.
Safe and well, they are reunited with a happy owner (who has escaped the clutches of the villainous foreman) and his dog, only for the owner to fall into the lake as Larry rushes into the arms of 'Jane'.
Well, except the bully foreman (Oliver Hardy), whom she doesn't like much.
Just as lunch is being delivered, the owner of the mill (Frank Alexander) rocks up with his daughter (Ann Hastings) to check out how the sawing is going.
We meet Larry, the dumb-bell, pipe in mouth, busily rowing along the tracks astride a huge tree bark.
The boss's daughter brings Larry lunch, much to the chagrin of the foreman, with Larry and the foreman having a bit of a scrap.
After his fight with the foreman, Larry is chased by more of the mill workers where he inadvertently flips a wheelbarrow full of paint over the owner.
Eventually he avoids capture by adopting a disguise.
Further run-ins involve buzz saws and falling trees - with Semon almost crushed to death on several occasions - before Larry decides that enough is enough and he seeks redress from his clumsy colleagues.
This involves chasing them all around the sawmill, amongst the trees, and on water, with Semon launching himself off a house in the process.
The madcap chase comes to a conclusion just as the owner, the foreman, the boss, and his daughter are sitting down to lunch.
In trying to get more paint, Semon is shot at by an angry co-worker, and with the bucket full of paint falling onto the head of the foreman, lunch is ruined and the owner isn't too happy.
He's made more unhappy when Semon's bungling means that a shedload of paint is spilt over the lunch party.
In fact, he's so unhappy that he fires the foreman and the workers.
Larry, meanwhile, attempts to seduce the owner's daughter in the owner's home. The shenanigans that ensue see the owner receive a shot in the backside because his dog sets off a gun (!); Larry and the owner's daughter hide in a safe; and the irate foreman returns with a gun to settle scores with the owner.
Thanks to the ingenious canine, who manages to divert the gun powder laid by the foreman away from the owner's safe, the safe is safe from the ensuing blast.
However, the house isn't; it's blown to smithereens.
Larry and the owner's daughter emerge from the safety of the safe in one piece, but it isn't long before Larry is clobbered over the head by the foreman's cronies and the owner's daughter kidnapped.
Larry's daring attempt to save her results in both of them high-up in one of the trees, armed with just a rope.
With all the grace of Tarzan and Jane, Larry and the owner's daughter (who I might just call 'Jane' from now on) swing from the rope which has been lassoed over a metal structure, and fly through the air before landing in a lake.
Safe and well, they are reunited with a happy owner (who has escaped the clutches of the villainous foreman) and his dog, only for the owner to fall into the lake as Larry rushes into the arms of 'Jane'.
Review
"The Worm Turns"
"The Sawmill" encapsulates everything that makes Larry Semon comedies great, in my book; frantic, bizarre plots that are utterly unpredictable and daredevil stunts which are extremely funny.
"The Sawmill" was the first Semon film that I saw. I stumbled upon his work by accident, as a couple of his comedies featured on a definitive Laurel and Hardy collection set that I have, which showcases the early work of the wonderful duo. "The Sawmill" was bold, ambitious, very silly, and very funny, and it left a strong impression on me and made me want to track down more of Semon's films.
Some quick scouting around popular film review sites drags up the fact that Semon often gets a lot of bad press - people are not very kind to him. I don't know whether it's because people mistakenly believe that when you write a "critical" review you have to "criticise" the film that you are talking about - a bad error - or whether the general unavailability of a lot of Semon's work means that people make judgements based upon viewing one or two of his films. People can also be harsh on Semon because he isn't Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton - a strange viewpoint - but whatever the reason for the bad press, the fact that most of Semon's corpus has not been beautifully restored or re-mastered certainly does darken one's appreciation of him.
So, this much is true. He's been critically overlooked and it's not easy to view his films.
I've bemoaned the fact that it's hard to obtain Charley Chase and Harry Langdon films in the UK, but at least some of their films have had official releases by Kino in the States. Semon hasn't had that luxury yet, although Grapevine video have done a good job in making more of his shorts and a feature film ("The Perfect Clown") available.
Hopefully the recently released biography of Semon by Claudia Sassen will arouse more interest in Semon's films and perhaps somebody like Kino might consider something like a "boxset" or collection of Semon's work in the near future.
Whatever your views of Semon, you can't deny the fact that for a period in the 1920s, he was massively popular. Not that his popularity should exclude him from criticism, oh no, but it's time to give the clown a much needed round of applause...
"The Sawmill" was one of the most expensive short silent films ever made, and it's easy to see why. With its gorgeous environment of trees and lakes, and several large explosions along the way, Semon's great outdoors must have blown the pants off any studio sets that other short films were using at the time of its release.
But despite its great backdrop, it's not all plain
Semon's films are much like a "comedy of excess": "Excess" is the key word here, because Semon doesn't do things in half measures. -Everything- is over the top and, well, excessive. His films are frantic, fast-paced, even absurd, with excessive amounts of running, incredible stunts, and humorous gags. It's difficult to write a synopsis for a Semon film because there is so much that goes on and you can't write about every incident!
There's often so much going on in a Semon film that the viewer can feel slightly overwhelmed by the experience as your brain struggles to remember every madcap minute and every bonkers stunt that takes place at breakneck speed.
However, perhaps that's the point of a Semon film, though. Larry Semon certainly wouldn't have expected someone almost 100 years later to sit down and write an accurate synopsis of "The Sawmill".
Larry Semon wouldn't be interested in hearing a detailed plot synopsis; what he'd want to know is whether the audience laughed at his film. And perhaps that's the crucial point of Semon's comedies of excess - the reason why there could be so many stunts to bombard the viewer with is because Semon wants the viewer to laugh as much as possible. As long as they are happy and laugh, what does it matter if they can't recall the plot in minute detail?
But the picaresque plots that Semon favoured can cause problems for a generation bred on tightknit dramatic unity -especially when it comes to issues concerning plot holes. In "The Sawmill", for example, what happens to the boss and the boss's daughter? Larry seems to have some kind of romantic interest with the boss's daughter, which is reciprocated, only for her to vanish from the film.
I think that part of my appreciation of "The Sawmill" comes from the fact that I like Semon's character. He just looks like a loveable rogue, doesn't he? And with his exaggerated eyebrows, white face paint, baggy trousers and plethora of winces and grimaces for the camera, Semon's character is simply funny to look at on screen.
Despite the plot holes in places, "The Sawmill" is an enjoyable madcap romp. Here are some of my favourite moments:
Semon's epic battle with Oliver Hardy; which sees the duo running around amidst the trees and dust and dirt. It's slapstick at its finest - especially when Semon believes that he has escaped from Hardy by showcasing his gymnast skills, only to receive a bump from a tree bark and crash down into the angry foreman.
The dangers of the sawmill are showcased to great slapstick success when Larry can't find anywhere safe to stand. Seeing trees crashing down near our hero are very funny indeed.
Semon's love of death-defying leaps: We get a lot of jumping and diving in "The Sawmill". Whether it's one of Semon's co-workers or even Larry himself leaping from a house, these moments must have been impressive and hilarious for Semon's first audiences.
And if you can't laugh at the epic chase which takes place in two boats on sea, land, and rocks, well, there isn't much hope for you!
Speaking of Oliver Hardy earlier, he plays his somewhat early typecast role as the blustering bully - which can be seen in many a Semon short from this period and when Hardy was briefly paired with Bobby Ray. He gets some good comedy moments: being scorned by the boss's daughter; foiled when attempting to bull-whip Larry; cooling off his burnt backside in a bucket of water; and blown up by gunpowder.
The final rescue of the owner's daughter once again showcases Semon's love of a grand, over the top finish, this time involving more daring leaps from a swinging rope into a lake.
If anything, it's the final moment of the comedy which falls a bit flat on its face as it's asking quite a lot of the audience to accept that the owner of the sawmill would want to rush into Larry's arms in the first place, never mind miss him by a country mile and -still- carry on running straight into the lake...
It's probably accurate to say that "The Sawmill" contains one of the weakest endings of any Larry Semon short film.
What do you think of "The Sawmill" and Larry Semon's short films in general?
Would you want to see Semon's films available as part of a DVD set and would you purchase it? If so, please leave a comment below.
I've toyed with the idea for a while now of setting up a number of petitions on change.org which would ask for signatures of people interested in obtaining official releases of films by Semon, the Roach Charley Chase talkies, in fact, anything Roach related like the Pitts/Todd/Kelly shorts, etc, and then somehow presenting said petition to companies like Kino to show them that many people would like to see some of the more "obscure" comedians getting official DVD releases.
It might work. Probably not, but it's worth a shot. So leave a comment below if you'd like to see a petition set up.
I've also decided to write much shorter reviews on Magnolia's Musings in the future. Each post will still feature a detailed synopsis and plenty of screenshots - as these might be of more interest to people than my confused ramblings - but the review section will be considerably shorter with just a few of my thoughts. This should mean that I can cover more films a month as well.
Watch it
"Discharged!"
"The Sawmill" is available on DVD, beautifully restored by Lobster films as part of their "Early Films of Oliver Hardy" set.
Here's the link: The Early Films of Oliver Hardy DVD
Special mention should be also made to Grapevine Video, who have released two DVDs containing some of the short films of Larry Semon. Here's hoping they release more Larry Semon shorts in the future.
Here's the link: Larry Semon: Volume 1 DVD
Larry Semon: Volume 2 DVD
Special mention should be also made to Grapevine Video, who have released two DVDs containing some of the short films of Larry Semon. Here's hoping they release more Larry Semon shorts in the future.
Here's the link: Larry Semon: Volume 1 DVD
Larry Semon: Volume 2 DVD
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