This year’s picks are two newly-restored rarities. First up is the world premiere of the new restoration of With Love and Hisses, with Oliver ‘Babe’ Hardy as a pompous sergeant in the Home Guard, driven to distraction by Stan’s well-meaning but infuriating private. James Finlayson joins the mayhem as Captain Bustle, exasperated by the hapless recruits in his charge. It’s an auspicious early outing for the Laurel-Hardy-Finlayson trio, whose comedy chemistry, sparked earlier that same year, would flourish across 13 years of filmmaking together.

We finish with Slipping Wives – an early on-screen pairing in which the gormless Stan is enlisted in a society wife’s plot to make her neglectful husband jealous, much to the consternation of Ollie’s bullish butler. Expect farcical mishaps, mistaken identities and pantomime tussles… plus the first instance of Laurel and Hardy in a bed together, one of their trademark scenarios, later affectionately given homage in the sketches Morecambe and Wise.

Dir. Fred Guiol | USA | 1927 | U | b&w English intertitles | 25m & 25m

Performing live: Günter Buchwald (piano), Frank Bockius (percussion)

Screening materials courtesy of FPA Classics Collection.

Please note: This screening will have seating allocated in either the stalls or the balcony.  Please select your preference when booking, subject to availability.

If you do not require a seat in the stalls for mobility/access reasons please consider booking into the balcony so that we can accommodate those who need to be downstairs as far as possible.