|
The opening acutely shows Harry Langdon's hand in the screenplay, and puts you in a Grand Illusion frame of mind, unexpectedly. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are WWI doughboys who bid each other farewell as Ollie goes over the top, dissolve to two decades after the Armistice and Stan is still patrolling the same foxhole. (A mountain of discarded bean cans adorns the woods that once were No Man's Land.) Ollie in an apron serves his missus (Minna Gombell), it's their first anniversary but he changes plans after seeing the estranged chum's picture in the newspaper. "I can't imagine anybody being that dumb... Oh yes I can!" After a malentendu at the Soldiers' Home, a string of giddy hazards up and down the labyrinth of stairways in search of a fabled steak dinner. The mystery of automatic doors, aborted blows with James Finlayson, a former paramour's saucy note, it all builds steadily toward the dismantling of the domestic abode. John G. Blystone's direction doesn't stint on one-reeler surrealism—Stan stuffs tobacco into his clenched fist and serenely puffs on his thumb in a gag surely enjoyed by Magritte. A certain oneiric quality leaves the punch bowl unscathed in the middle of the exploded kitchen, naturally it ends up on the pretty neighbor (Patricia Ellis) who is drenched and changed into Ollie's wide jammies before transforming herself into Dalí's Leda Chair. "How far's a jiffy?" "About three shakes of a dead lamb's tail." Billy Gilbert arrives with pith helmet and rifle for a punchline nixed by Hal Roach as too scabrous, it nevertheless has consequences for Chuck Jones' inestimable Rabbit Fire. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |