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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	None
Rating
Year Released	1933
Running Time	62:00 minutes
RSDL/Flipper	Dual Layer	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Selection, then Menu
Region	2	Director	William A Seiter Leo McCarey
Studio Distributor	Universal Home Video	Starring	Stan Laurel Oliver Hardy
Case	Transparent Amaray
RPI	$36.95	Music	-

    Sons Of The Desert sees the bumbling duo at a special meeting of their lodge, the Sons Of The Desert obviously, making a pledge to attend the annual convention in one week in Chicago. Trouble is they have to get the permission of their wives to go, and that is virtually impossible. And so Ollie pretends to have some illness, whereupon Stan hires a "doctor" to vouch that Ollie needs to take a cruise to Honolulu as the only means of recovery. Ollie's wife insists he does so, and Ollie insists that Stan accompany him - although Stan already has permission to go to the convention. And so they head off to Chicago, whilst their wives think they are heading to Honolulu. Naturally they get up to all sorts of shenanigans in Chicago, which includes being filmed in a parade. They meet up with a comical character at the convention, which almost results in the beans being spilt. However, that minor hiccup is overcome and they return to home in Los Angeles, only to find out that the ship upon which they are supposedly returning to Los Angeles has foundered and the passengers have been rescued by another ship. The duo have thus returned home a day early. The whole ruse is collapsed by the girls going to the cinema to console themselves only to be confronted by newsreel footage of a certain parade in Chicago, with the antics of their husbands well and truly on display.

    We Faw Down sees our heroes trying to get off to a poker game, but being hampered by their watchful wives. So they pretend an incoming telephone call is from their boss, requesting their presence for a show at a local theatre. So they sneak off, but on the way they assist a lady in rescuing her hat, unfortunately to their own detriment. Whilst enjoying the company of the ladies at their apartment whilst their clothes are drying, the boyfriend turns up. Beating a hasty retreat through the window, their wives see them, whilst searching for news of them after a fire at the said local theatre, and return home to await their explanation.

    As I said, amazing similarities between the stories, but who cares. Over the years I have seen these films many, many times and whilst the overt comedy has long lost its outright mirth, there remains plenty to enjoy here in the subtlety of the work of the duo. Perhaps not in the truly classic mold of say Buster Keaton in The General, this nonetheless remains some classic comedy from an era of great comedy. This is a style of comedy that we are unlikely to see ever again and in some respects that is to be regretted.

    Whilst I doubt that anyone approaching this DVD would be unaware of the contents therein, this remains an essential purchase for lovers of classic comedy from the classic comedy duo team of all time. It may be old, it may have been seen many, many times before but it will still bear many more repeated viewings. It is to be noted that in addition to the two original black and white films, the DVD also contains a bastardized, colorized version of the main feature. Most of what I have to say about colorized versions of classic films would definitely result in a XXX rating for this review, so perhaps I shall just confine myself to saying that these bastardizations should not be inflicted upon DVD in any way, shape or form. Still, I presume some might want to enjoy the film in a wishy washy colour version that destroys most of the original detail of the film.

Video

    Obviously for a film of this age, the transfer is presented in a Full Frame format which is equally obviously not 16x9 enhanced.

    Allowing for the age of the transfer, this ends up being quite a decently sharp effort with a fair amount of detail on offer - at least in the "proper" version of the film. The colorized version of the main feature loses a lot of the sharpness and detail in its quest for computer-coloured glory, whilst the short is just a little more blessed with a softer focus in general. Naturally the shadow detail is not the best, but thankfully this was a known inherent problem with film making of the era and so it was partly compensated for by the generally restricted use of darker tones in the picture. You would hardly classify these as clear transfers, most especially not the colorized version, and at times grain does become an issue - especially in the short. But this at no time resulted in an unwatchable image at all. There did not seem to be too much of a problem with noise in the transfer.

    The two black and white transfers demonstrate a nice style of black and white tones - whilst lacking the ultimate depth of tone, the grey scales are not too bad and convey a quite decent amount of information. The colorized version of the feature on the other hand demonstrates in abundance exactly why I cannot see the point to the process. The colours, apart from the very black blacks and very white whites, are quite wishy washy and lack definition. They introduce into the image a degree of blur that I find difficult to watch, as the transition from one colour to another is generally done far too subtly. The colours have an unnatural appearance to them and skin tones are especially unnaturally handled. A direct comparison between the original black and white and the colorized version is decidedly not in favour of the colorized version. It simply loses the definition in the image. There is also the inherent problem of perceived colour bleed in the colorized version that I find distracting: I am not sure that it is actually there but I certainly perceive it to be and cannot abide it. Perhaps the most telling problem with the colorized version is the lack of saturation in the colours, enhancing the wishy washy look of the transfer.

    There did not appear to be any significant MPEG artefacts in the transfer, and film-to-video artefacts comprise some mild aliasing in the main feature. Naturally the transfers are fairly riddled with film artefacts, but probably less than expected overall. The most intrusive would be the reel change markings, but short of finding the original print I doubt that this problem could be eliminated. Funnily enough, the colorized version is far less prone to film artefacts (presumably coloured out by the computer colourization process), and that is about the only plus I can find about that version.

    In the absence of noting any layer change, it is presumed that this is a Dual Layer formatted DVD with one of the main features on the second layer of the DVD.
 
 

Video Ratings Summary

	Original Version	Colorized Version
Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain
Film-to-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The dialogue is reasonably clear and easy to understand in the soundtrack. There did not seem to be any real problems with audio sync in the transfer, although bear in mind that this was reviewed right after watching the soccer on SBS, which was so far out of sync it was not funny - accordingly, I might have been less attuned to any such problems on the DVD.

    The musical score is, as far as I can ascertain from the DVD, uncredited.

    Not much to worry about here - aside from a few glitches that are to be expected in a soundtrack of this age, there is not a fat lot wrong with what we have got. Basically you don't need much in the way of speakers to indulge in this DVD.
 
 

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris (have a laugh, check out the bio)
3rd February 2001