Harry Edwards flops on every sight gag in All Night Long, seemingly a combination of his inability to direct comedy and star Harry Langdon’s lack of comic timing. However, otherwise Edwards does a great job with the short. He’s got an excellent dinner table sequence and a lot of special effect work is outstanding.

Long has a couple bookends but primarily takes place during World War I in France. Marines Langdon and Vernon Dent fight over a girl. Dent and Natalie Kingston, who plays the girl, are both excellent. Dent’s comic timing is spot on and he makes up for Langdon.

Langdon isn’t so much bad, just unfunny. Long‘s narrative is relatively complicated–a comic take on a melodrama–and Langdon’s wrong for it.

Edwards’s comic failings are mostly forgivable, except when he tries turning grotesque war imagery into belabored sight gags. It’s awkward and tiresome, while Long otherwise isn’t.

Not Recommended

CREDITS

Directed by Harry Edwards; written by Hal Conklin and Vernon Smith; directors of photography, Lee Davis and William Williams; edited by William Hornbeck; produced by Mack Sennett; released by Pathé Exchange.

Starring Harry Langdon (Harry Hall), Natalie Kingston (Nanette Burgundy), Vernon Dent (Gale Wyndham), Fanny Kelly (Mrs. Burgundy) and Leo Sulky (Mr. Burgundy).