Die Klotzköpfe

Producer Hal Roach was reportedly disturbed at the increasingly bizarre endings Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy proposed for their MGM-released features of the mid/late-30s but the comedic results here more than warrant it. The feature begins making you think it will be merely a spoof of a slightly-musty WWI 'returning veteran' melodrama, then enters a strange, deceptive 'midground' number of scenes where the two are supposedly happily reunited yet must almost literally battle each other in an undercurrent of mindslips, oddball personas, switched anonymity, and a willfully ignorant understanding of lethal technology (Stan attempts to back up a loaded dump truck to help Ollie leave a parking space and instead spills a ton of dirt and refuse right on Ollie's head. The results aren't much better when Ollie--unexplainedly--soon allows him to drive the car into his home parking garage.) The film's mise en scene finally settles at the resplendent, multi-leveled apartment complex where Ollie tries to get his previously sweet and accommodating wife to fix a steak "this thick" (Ollie holds his fingers apart several inches to indicate the due process and wealth both men are implicitly entitled to) for them. But once Ollie inadvertently destroys the complex's only elevator and the two begin to create total havoc not only with several other residents but with Oliver's own wife the film is a textbook example of brilliantly refined movie comedic targeting: sweetly gentle optical fades from debris-ridden visual punch lines, well-timed and properly attenuated sound effects (the 'hiss' from Oliver's kitchen gas stove when Stan dimly attempts to try to light it is particularly dangerous sounding), public revealment of the often unglamorous politics of marriage and neighborliness, supposedly innocent bystanders turned cheerleaders of outright societal collapse and hungry for more (this IMDBer was on the floor by the time a totally innocent married woman from across the hall had been stripped of her normal clothes & wearing Ollie's pajamas had to escape her own husband by masquerading as a chair while Stan kept trying to sit on her.) Say what you will about the increasingly poisonous business relationship between Stan and Hal Roach, the film is polished looking, employs several old timers from their silent years, and I found the portrayal of the women understanding and believable, not as quaint (Marx Brothers) or bellicose (W.C. Fields) as some of the competing comedy works of that era. Hadn't seen this one in years but it proves the boys were capable of many more years of contribution with the right administrative and technical support.