On a gaffé

Just a quick note to say that this movie is silent, but was nevertheless released with music and effects on Vitaphone discs. The discs has been found, and at least the German Kinowelt DVD release of Sons of the Desert has We Faw Down as an bonus, complete with the music and effects track.

It is always a bonus to watch the silent Laurel & Hardy comedies with the proper, original music and effects track. This brings us a little bit closer to the film's original state.

In general, the Vitaphone system did not last very long, but the system of having soundtracks stored separately does open the possibility of restoring soundtracks even if the film element has been put together from various prints.

WE FAW DOWN

Aspect ratio: 1.33:1

Sound format: Silent

(Black and white - Short film)

Stan 'n' Ollie get mixed up with a couple of floozies (Kay Deslys and Vera White) after setting out to visit a theatre which burns down in their absence! Needless to say, their tyrannical wives (Vivien Oakland and Bess Flowers) are not amused...

Leo McCarey's OK comedy laid the narrative framework for William Seiter's masterpiece SONS OF THE DESERT (1934), with L&H playing brow-beaten victims of circumstance, forced to tell a monstrous lie which backfires in spectacular fashion. Much of it is very funny, especially the scene in which Stan is teased by Deslys, leading to a violent game of push and shove. However, some of the fun is undercut by Oakland and Flowers, playing their roles completely straight, which adds an element of unpleasantness to the 'henpecked husband' scenario. Originally released in the UK as WE SLIP UP.

Stan Laurel and the writers for the Laurel and Hardy series of shorts and features on occasion reworked their movies from the pair's previous films. A good example is their December 1928's "We Faw Down." The story concerns the two falsely telling their wives they're going to a movie, but they're really playing poker at their friend's house. They get sidetracked helping two women get one of their hats wedged underneath a car. Laurel and Hardy's charitable act leads to a messy situation with one of the ladies' husband. When the two wives hear about what happened, there's heck to pay. If this sounds like Laurel and Hardy's 1933's "Sons of the Desert," this is exactly the outline of their classic feature film.

In addition, 1932's 'Their First Mistake' copies the telephone gag from "We Faw Down," pretending the call is from the pair's new boss. There were also scenes in "We Faw Down" that didn't make the final edit, but ended up in their next release, 1929's 'Liberty.'

Oliver Hardy told the pair's team of writers the tale he heard was from his laundress that spawned the "We Faw Down's" plot. It was a rare instance where Hardy's suggestion resulted in a storyline. Most of their movies' inspiration came from Laurel, who sketched a majority of the team's screenplays. Years of experience in comedy made Stan adept in shaping his writers' scripts, improving and adding a number of hilarious sequences. His working sessions were loud affairs with several writers in a conference room where each attempted to top the others by suggesting increasingly outrageous situations.

"We Faw Down" was Leo McCarey's first short directing Laurel and Hardy. He claimed he was responsible in pairing the two as a team the previous year (1927). McCarey's name was always listed in the credits as the 'Supervising Director.' For the first time he found out just as other directors before him that Laurel essentially ran the movie set. There was an unwitting understanding the head director always deferred to Stan. Hal Roach, their producer, said if Laurel didn't like what the director was telling them, "the director didn't say 'Well, you're going to do it anyway.' That was understood." Laurel would suggest the direction the scene was going to take, and the director picked up on the comic's idea and ran with it.

This film features Laurel and Hardy in a very familiar plot. As is often the case, the boys go out to play and lie to the wives about it--with disastrous results. This type of situation was featured in several films made by the team (such as THEIR PURPLE MOMENT and BLOTTO) and was remade very closely in SONS OF THE DESERT. In fact, after Laurel and Hardy, this same plot was reworked on "The Honeymooners" and even "The Flintstones"!

In this film, Stan and Ollie go out for a good time and meet two ladies who eventually ask them back to their apartment. What they don't know is that the wives suspect the boys are playing around and one of the lady has a boyfriend who is a professional boxer! The wives actually catch them in the act but Stan and Ollie don't know it--and there is a very, very long segment where the boys make up lie after lie to explain themselves. This leads to an expectedly violent confrontation. The end was cute and repeated very closely in BLOCKHEADS. While there's a lot of familiar material in this short, it is very well done and funny.

Once more the famous two get in some serious trouble with their wives, after a series of unfortunate incidents, which forces them to come up with a lie, which of course only make their situation even worser...

The jokes remain funny, even after they are repeated multiple times in the movie. The events leading up to the confrontation with the two wives are both wonderfully constructed and executed and filled with some typical slapstick humor. The movie knows to remain constantly funny throughout the whole movie which makes this a very consistent comedy to watch.

The ending might have some slow moments in it and might not be as funny as the first part of the movie, it doesn't really make the movie less pleasant to watch. "We Faw Down" is good enough for more than a few laughs and it shows Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy once more in top-form and their chemistry and timing is spot-on!

Perhaps not as memorable and good as other Laurel & Hardy pictures but still an entertaining and watchable comedy-short from the famous comical duo.

7/10

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