Film Review
After Laurel and Hardy's best film,
Way
Out West (1937) came what is widely considered their
worst.
Swiss Miss is an
extraordinary sidewards step into mediocrity for a comedy duo
who were at their creative peak. You get the impression that producer Hal Roach had, by this
stage, completely lost confidence in Stan and Ollie's ability to carry
a feature by themselves, and so we have to endure a yawn-inducing
secondary storyline about a dull opera singer and her even duller husband.
Five tedious minutes into the film, you begin to wonder whether our comedy heroes
are ever going to appear. If you watch this film on video or DVD,
I bet you will not be able to resist the urge to indulge in a bit
of judicial editing, fast-forwarding past all the bits in which
Stan and Ollie are absent. (I've done that and, believe me,
it makes a much better film.)
After working together for over a decade, the relationship between
Roach and his two leading men was in terminal decline by the time
Swiss Miss went into
production. Stan Laurel was growing increasingly resentful of
Roach's interference, particularly in the editing - something which is
painfully evident in this film. Roach vetoed a potentially good
gag (a bomb in the piano) and excised what may have been the best
number in the film, a comedy duet sung by Stan and Ollie in the
cheese-maker's shop. The producer knew that he still had
two bankable stars but was finding it increasingly difficult to fit
them into the kind of films he wanted to make, and so the rift was
inevitable.
Swiss Miss was Hal Roach's
attempt to emulate MGM's
Night at the Opera (1935), the
phenomenonally successful film that kick-started the Marx Brothers'
career after the failure of
Duck Soup (1933) and their
departure from Paramount. Roach's misguided belief was that if
you gave the audience more variety, the viewing experience would be
enhanced. As it turned out, more did not mean better. Who,
having paid to watch a Laurel and Hardy film, would want to sit through
the tedious domestic antics of a pompous composer and his equally
unsympathetic wife? The musical numbers are attractively staged
but are mere gloss to what is a shallow and unenjoyable film.
The film's biggest failing is that it singularly fails to capitalise on
the talent of its two stars. Stan and Ollie are practically
reduced to the daft caricatures that they would later become in their
films for MGM and Twentieth Century Fox. Consequently, their
comedy routines largely fall flat and fail to elicit much more than a
chortle, in marked contrast to their previous films in which they could
be relied upon to reduce an audience to hysterics. The sequence
in which Stan cons a Saint-Bernard into surrendering its flask
of brandy is amusing but out of character, whilst the one in which Stan
and Ollie attempt to transport a piano across a rope bridge is painful
to watch, because it has absolutely no sense of reality and is just
plain silly. And as for the man in the monkey suit...
Thankfully, Hal Roach learned from his experiences on this film and
would be considerably more hands off in his subsequent L&H
films.
Swiss Miss was
an unfortunate aberration from which Stan and Ollie soon recovered,
although their association with Roach was soon to come to an end...
© James Travers 2010
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
Mousetrap salesmen Stan and Ollie arrive in Switzerland, believing that
they will have more success selling their wares in a country that is
renowned for its cheese, since more cheese presumably means more
mice. The theory appears to be vindicated when they manage to
sell their entire stock to a cheese-maker, although they do not realise
they have been paid with fake money. The boys celebrate
their success with a slap-up meal at a classy hotel, but when it
becomes apparent that they have no real money they end up in the
kitchen washing dishes. Ollie then falls for an attractive young
woman, Anna, not knowing that she is a famous opera singer and wife to
Victor, a renowned composer. The latter had hoped to shut himself
away in the hotel so that he can work on his next opera, but Anna
cannot keep away from him, since she is determined to play the leading
role in the opera...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.