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"This delicate situation" is not a spoof but a sturdy sagebrush construction on the order of Robert N. Bradbury, and just happens to star Laurel and Hardy at their most gracefully buoyant. The frontier town of Brushwood Gulch has a Cinderella amid cowboys, the prospector's daughter (Rosina Lawrence) toils in the kitchen while her guardian (James Finlayson) runs the saloon with the vixen-chanteuse (Sharon Lynn). Out of the domestic abode and into the wilderness (It Happened One Night's most famous gag gets a stagecoach to screech to a halt), the tenderfoot messengers arrive to the accompaniment of the Avalon Boys—Stan and Ollie do a softshoe to "At the Ball, That's All" and, in a couple of long takes before a flickering rear projection, offer a distillate of vaudeville and cinema. (Their later duet of "Trail of the Lonesome Pine" adds another layer of casual surrealism, Stan's basso profundo throws Ollie off until a mallet turns it into a frilly falsetto.) A brush with the trigger-happy sheriff, a charade for the gold-mine deed. "Is it true that dear daddy is dead?" "Well, we hope he is. They buried him." A perfect Hal Roach production, laid out by James W. Horne in leisurely rhythms and long shots punctuated by double-taking close-ups. The retrieving of a locket (unable to venture past Ollie's vast neck, it makes its way down his pants in a methodical disrobing) and the eating of a bowler (Stan's weepy grimace turns to appetite as he pulls out napkin and saltshaker) are heavenly routines, serenely presented for Chaplin's delectation. The lighter-thumb, the ticklish conjugation: "Ha-ha!" "Ho-ho!" "Hee-hee!" Hope in The Paleface claims its mantle, though the burro in the bedroom puts it closer to L'Age d'Or. With Stanley Fields, Vivien Oakland, and Chill Wills. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |