At a time when racist and socially problematic attitudes were casually flaunted (see Their Purple Moment and We Faw Dawn), Laurel & Hardy’s deconstruction of machismo (and militarism) looks like the flagship of their entire output. This is still true today – above all today. If the opening (vaguely) celebrates the campaigns of the American navy in the style of a mock newsreel, irreverence is just around the corner. Stan and Ollie are sailors on leave who strut about in a rental car with a bluster they can ill afford. They do not know how to drive; they are not even capable of unlocking a chewing gum vending machine, let alone emerging victorious from a fight with Charlie Hall (the “little nemesis” in many of the duo’s films). Two girls in a fix (Thelma Hill and Ruby Blaine) provide the ideal opportunity for Oliver to show off some of his renowned gestures, which cry out “leave it to me”, without the need for intertitles. It will be up to the women to physically defend the two little boys, as expected. This series of gags is functional to the climax that arrives in the very elaborate second part of the film: a traffic jam which waiting to be transformed into a devastating conflict. This war waged by a stupid and nasty humanity with a self-destructive tendency coincides with Hal Roach’s technical peak: no longer pies in the face, but a sumptuous chaos of wrecked cars. The dissolution of Fordism!

Alessandro Criscitiello