Click picture to watch video.
Roger Pratt is a top cinematographer. He’s worked with Terry Gilliam quite a few times, and he’s filmed some very big movies, including Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. But long before Roger there was another Pratt working behind the movie camera.
Let’s go way back to 1922, when Gilbert Pratt was directing Stan Laurel in the 3-reel (approx. 30-minute) silent movie Mud and Sand, a parody of the recent Rudolph Valentino hit, Blood and Sand. Laurel was working solo in those days.
Don’t expect this video to look as good as my previous post with Laurel and Hardy. The audio has some very good Dixieland music, but I think it was just a CD that somebody played in the background as a soundtrack.
Short subjects were really banged out in those days, and take-offs of recent hit movies were a convenient source for ideas then, just as they are now. The second Mickey Mouse cartoon was The Gallopin’ Gaucho, in 1928, which parodied a recent Douglas Fairbanks movie.
Again, Stan Laurel as a bullfighter! I see a pattern emerging!