Schneider Steven - Steven jay schneider стр 47.

Among the films highlights is a remarkable dream sequence in which Megans bedroom is broken into by a Yellow Peril monster whom one assumes is Yen, and then Megan is saved by a masked man in western clothes, whom one assumes is her fiancé. But when she removes the mask, it turns out to be Yen, who is standing beside her when she wakes. No less memorable is the exquisite final sequencewhich might be interpreted as a Hollywood brand of pop Buddhism, though its rendered with sweetness and delicacy. JRos

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1930s

SONS OF THE DESERT (1933)

Centering around a trip to Hawaii with the Freemason-like fraternity of the title and Stan and Ollies attempts to conceal this jaunt from their wives, Sons of the Desert takes a basic farce plot and turns it into a vehicle

for motion picture comedys greatest double act. Superb supporting performances, most notably from Mae Busch as Mrs. Hardy and comedian-director Charlie Chase as a drunken version of himself, along with capable direction from William A. Seiter (whose other notable comedy was the Marx Brothers workmanlike Room Service in 1938), also make Sons of the Desertunusually for a seventy-year-old film comedyutterly watchable today. KK

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1930s

ITS A GIFT (1934)

U.S. (Paramount) 73m BW

Director: Norman Z. McLeod

Producer: William LeBaron

Screenplay: Jack Cunningham, W.C. Fields

Photography: Henry Sharp

Music: Lew Brown, Buddy G. DeSylva, Ray Henderson, Al Jolson, John Leipold

Cast: W.C. Fields, Kathleen Howard, Jean Rouverol, Julian Madison, Tommy Bupp, Baby LeRoy, Tammany Young, Morgan Wallace, Charles Sellon, Josephine Whittell, T. Roy Barnes, Diana Lewis, Spencer Charters, Guy Usher, Dell Henderson

Undoubtedly the finest of all W.C. Fieldss comedies, Its a Gift may not offer the inspired insanity of such waywardly surreal gems as Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941) or the unforgettable short The Fatal Glass of Beer (1933), but it is certainly the most coherent and most consistently funny of his features.

Despite having been cobbled together from old revue sketches and scenes from earlier movies like Its the Old Army Game (1926), Norman Z. McLeods Its a Gift actually provides something resembling a proper story. Harold Bissonette (Fields) is so tired of the constant pressures of family life and running a general store that he secretly buys, with his hard-earned savings, the Californian orange grove of his dreams, and sets off with his family (all vocally horrified by what hes done, naturally), only to discover that their purchase is nothing like the palace pictured in the advertisement. That said, of course, this plot is simply an excuse for another of Fields marvelously misanthropic essays on the perils and pitfalls of parenthood, marriage, neighbors, and Prohibition, allowing him free rein to court our sympathy for an old curmudgeon who feels himself maltreated by virtually the entire world.

It is particularly difficult to select highlights from such a supremely even series of set pieces, but the catastrophically destructive visit to Fieldss shop paid by the feeble, deaf, blind, and uncommonly belligerent Mr. Muckle (Charles Sellon) must rank as some kind of peak in politically incorrect hilarity. The protagonists forlorn attempt to sleep on the porchdespite noisy neighbors, a nagging wife (the inimitable Kathleen Howard), a murderous screwdriver wielded by Baby LeRoy, a rolling coconut, a broken hammock, a rifle, and a quite crazily cheery insurance salesman in search of one Karl LaFong (Capital K, small A, small R)is quite simply as brilliant and nightmarish a portrait of ordinary life as deadpan Hollywood comedy ever got. Mind you, the shaving sequence is pretty great, too. Oh, and then theres the dinner with the family. Sheer genius. GA

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1930s

TRIUMPH DES WILLENS (1934)