Our Relations

Stan and Ollie are married and live orderly, quiet lives. Their families never told them one thing: they have twins. Alf and Bert are sailors and were counted the family disgrace years ago and forgotten. Now their ship docks. The two pairs start moving about the same city. Nobody knows who is who. A ring is left in safekeeping, a debt goes unpaid, a bill comes at a restaurant, and the wives see their husbands with the wrong men. In the end all four meet on the same dock and two of them are left standing in a barrel of cement. Harry Lachman directs. Stan Laurel plays two of the four parts and Oliver Hardy the other two; Betty Brown and Daphne Pollard are in the cast. It is an American production, made in 1936. The source is W. W. Jacobs's story. Stan Laurel is one of the producers; the pair had more say in their own work in this period. The narrative uses the twin premise to the full and all the comedy comes from mistaken identity. The optical techniques of the time were used for the double scenes and both characters appear in the same frame. The narrative is not episodic; it has one of the tidiest plots among the pair's features. The scene on the dock at the end is its best known passage. It is counted among their most admired features. Its limit is age; the jokes belong to their period, the pace is slow, and the premise repeats. Who it is for: viewers who like Laurel and Hardy and classic comedy. Who it is not for: it is old, simple, and the ending conventional.