Who is better Charlie Chaplin or Laurel and Hardy

It's true that the later L&H movies were poor , but like what's been said they are not true L&H films,,, when hal-roach where no longer involved and stan was no longer in full control of all the material that's when the movies became poor.
 
I know. Just as well you agree :)
I was only highlighting what the differences I think are between the two types of comedy.:) Also I'm not suggesting either is better than the other, merely that I find Chaplins work more satisfying nowadays than Laurel and Hardys although I think they're both great. I just wondered if anyone was of the opinion that one was better than the other, hence the title. In the event all this thread seems to have become is a poll with 99% in favour of Laurel and Hardy.
 
99% in favour of Laurel and Hardy.

And rightfully so hehe

Great topic of debate though
 
Get the Mods to Add a Pole ;)
 
a good memory that all ways sticks out is in the silent short 'your darn tootin'

the part where they are playing in the band and stans sheet music blows under the conductors foot ,and he keeps trying to grab it haha!!!

superb
 
First of all, excuse my very bad English.
Six years after, I read all your opinions and I can't resist to join in this forum to express my opinion about THIS subject, a subject or topic in which I worked hard in my life.
I hope to explain (in my very limited English) why L&H movies are not only simple comedies for out laughs, but very more complex movies and why they are preferred by many people (me too) to Chaplin's films.
1) The L&H style of comedy is VERY INNOVATIVE and it says many more that : "Laugh...!" . It's not (not only) slapstick. The INDIRECT VIOLENCE is a L&H discover. For example: a guy mocks them, then they cut his tie. Meanwhile, the boy lets them to. Then it's time for him, and they watch how he throws his hat to the ground and trampled them... And so, in a "crescendo" of indirect violence.
2) This kind of violence is a great attack to private property that in Chaplin's films never got beyond moralizing. This violence attacks the absurdity of the concept of private property or the reasons why a person can prefer to put in risk his life defending, for example, his car.
3) And since I'm talking about cars, L & H anticipated many future problems, like the car tyranny in the world, the traffic jams (like in the film Two Tars, 1928), and all the problems caused by cars. In fact, many L&H's films end with a destroyed car.
4) Surrealistic factors and many other innovative details in the L&H comedy, like the importance they give to their hats. A house is burning, but they do not allow their hats fall to the ground without picking them up, and only later they will go to fetch water.
5) In this line of surrealistic comedy are those scenes when they start dancing in the middle of the dangerous or problematic situation.
6) L&H are losers; Chaplin is a winner. Not only in their real life, I say: in the films. Today, only few people believes that you can get very far being a good person. It's very hard to believe in that Chaplin's message, and it's very easy believe in L&H's message. Chaplin ALWAYS (or almost) gets the girl (so Buster Keaton, so Harold Lloyd, so Harry Langdon...). L&H NEVER (or almost) get the girls. They end up alone.
7) Pessimism is more credible today; and L&H films haven't a happy end.
8) When Chaplin mocks or beats an authority, he's a SMART GUY that wins. L&H are two fools, and when they beat an authority, it's a more powerful critic about authorities stupidity.
I can say more, but it's a great effort to me to write in English (if this can be named "English"), so I leave it for another day, if I get a response.
 
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I think I don't say the most important thing: IMO, L&H's comedies are deeper than Chaplin's.
I'll try to explain it in a few words.
Chaplin says things that everyone expects to hear. "Be good", and all that moralizing things. He argues that speech as a way for people to be integrated into a hostile world and transform it. In Easy Street, for example, that policeman transforms all the people in the neighborhood with his good actions.
The Tramp. Chaplin's character, is a marginal one that always ends integrated to the world.
We know that reality is not that simple thing.
L&H try to join the world, to integrate into the system, and simply they can´t. The world is too crazy for them or they're too crazy for the world, but there isn't possibility for them to integrate this world (or being functional to this world, to this system).
Then, although we are integrated in the system, L&H appeal to that part of each one of us that tells us from within ourselves, "do not belong!".
It's a most modern concept that those Chaplin managed.
Everyone can read about it in Freud's Civilization and its Discontents. But it's not necessary to understand this, nor L&H comedies. We all know those aspects of ourselves, like "Tomorrow is my examination, and I am here playing football instead of being home studying...".
I think it is the reason why L&H are in the cover of Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper, and Chaplin is not there.
Chaplin sees a world that he can explain and a world that can be better.
L&H are pessimistic (and Freudian too). They see that the world doesn't work. And can't work ever cause the human being is a totally crazy one. I think, for example, in that film Tit for Tat. It's not a great film, IMO, but, look at this: L&H open a shop and they gradually pay more attention to the fight with his neighbor than to the shop. And people is stealing all their merchandise!!! This idea is more crazy, abstract and complex than all Chaplin did in his life.
Chaplin never could say anything about that thing within ourselves that is disfunctional to the world, cause he was entirely functional. An he won. And he was a millionaire in that way.
In L&H, Ollie's character try many times to live according with social norms and sometimes try to guide Stan to the same way (like parents do with a boy), but it doesn't work. He simply ends following Stan, that incredible adult-child that only does what he can do.
Both of them are two aspects or tendences of ourselves that we can recognize more frequently into us (but it's hard to admit) than that "good like an angel" Tramp that Chaplin shows.
Moreover, the emotional parts of Chaplin's films resort to low blows, like Disney's Bambi or Dumbo. Who's able to not cry (or, at least, to feel emotions) when the subject is so sad as death, hungry or people sleeping outside?
These are easy resources to any writer.
Chaplin was very complete (director, musician, actor, agile and strong like a comedian...) but very overrated about his simplistic vision of reality, like Hitchcock. Their ideas were manichaeist, simplistic, with a reality divided in two types of persons: good people and bad people.
L&H instead, are underrated. There are many more slapstick scenes in Chaplin than in L&H films. Chaplin eating a shoe in The Gold Rush is a great creation, but it isn't very comic. But Stan in Twice Two complicated by the napkin, tie, butter, toast and knife... it is comedy. It's not slapstick, and it's frequent in L&H films. And it's a sharp and deep idea about the world: How many objects that came to help us, come, really, to complicate us? Ask to many mature persons about computers, remote controls, etc.
L&H humor is full of deep observations about the nonsense of today's world.
 
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It is difficult to choose but I would go with Laurel Hardy cos they bounced off each other and came up with hilarious comedy whereas Charlie Chaplin had to rely solely on himself.
 
I never found Charlie Chaplin that funny in fact I can't remember ever laughing at Charlie Chaplin.
Laurel and Hardy; on the other hand is just hilarious.
I can't think of anything that makes me laugh so much.
Just crazy stuff. What a team.
 
Still cracks me up...

 
Although you know what's coming and corny as they make them they still manage to make you laugh.
Not the one below but I like the one in the haunted house and murders best of all.
 
Here's a good question:
Does anyone know anyone who doesn't find Laurel and Hardy funny?
 
One more time, excuse me about my very bad English.
I subscribe all you say (How can I put a "Like"? I don't know make it).
The one below, for example, is a little masterpiece IMO, because of its rhythm, increasing since minute 5 to the end, and the real parade of comic techniques, like: slapstick, absurdity, anticipation, dangerous situations, exaggeration, repetition, imitation, and all soaked in the obligation to remain silent. This is a subject that everybody knows: when you are in a "don't make noise!" or "don't laugh!" situation (in class, in a hospital, at a funeral, etc.) the tension can make you laugh many more. Everybody knows it, but Stan Laurel seems to be the first discovering it or at least using it in cinema (in sound films, obviously). He used it even in silent films!!!, like The Finishing Touch (1928). Here, in the one below, Nicht Owls (1930), "don't make any noise!" it's a clue to make everything more hilarious:

 
L&H were comedy perfection imo. They way Oli used to give that look at the camera was just brilliant. Reading this thread has made me want to dig out my DVD collection tonight. Hell I might let the kids watch it.
 
I enjoy both Chaplin and L&H. The consistently good body of work from L&H probably nudges them in front. Chaplin was brilliant in his own right though with a bit more social conscience. See clip for example:



o_O :)
 

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