The Flying Deuces

Stan and Ollie are in Paris. Ollie is in love with a girl, and when she says she is married he tries to throw himself into the river. While Stan is talking him out of it a stranger intervenes with a better idea: join the Foreign Legion, where the past is forgotten. They enlist. Then they change their minds and want to leave; but there is no leaving the legion, and the penalty for desertion is the firing squad. A. Edward Sutherland directs. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy take the leads. It is one of the films they made away from the Hal Roach studio where they had worked for years; in this period they had begun working with independent producers. The best known passage is Ollie singing while Stan dances, one of the most often shown moments of the pair. The narrative is episodic and loose; the plot exists mainly to join the comic turns together. The aeroplane sequence makes up the last section and was shot with the technical means of the period; it is held long. The idea at the very end is odd and has no other instance in their work; the narrative leaves realism entirely. Who it is for: viewers who like the classic comedy pairs and American cinema of the thirties. Who it is not for: the structure is scattered, the humour repeats, and it is slow by present tempo.