There is a sick man whom physicians have given up. Enter two burglars who are promptly mistaken for new specialists.

The Unintended Operation: A Deep Dive into Hal Roach's 'Before Taking' In the annals of early cinematic comedy, few premises possess the audacious, almost macabre, brilliance of Hal Roach’s 1918 short, Before Taking. This film, a testament to the era’s boundless creativity and a precursor to countless...

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Comparing the cinematic DNA and archive impact of two defining moments in cult history.

Ralph Ceder

Hal Roach
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" The Unintended Operation: A Deep Dive into Hal Roach's 'Before Taking' In the annals of early cinematic comedy, few premises possess the audacious, almost macabre, brilliance of Hal Roach’s 1918 short, Before Taking. This film, a testament to the era’s boundless creativity and a precursor to countless mistaken-identity farces, plunges its audience into a domestic crisis where the lines between professional and charlatan, savior and thief, are hilariously blurred. It’s a narrati..."

James Finlayson
Hal Roach
United States

