The Parent Trap

Another big hit of 1961 was Disney's The Parent Trap, a fairly charming family comedy that has an interesting subtext--divorce. In 1961, divorce wasn't all that common, but "broken home" was becoming part of the vernacular. In this film, divorce is seen as regrettable and simply a mistake in judgment, something that can be corrected by the determination of children.

Hayley Mills has a dual role as twins. In a plot form that is as old as Plautus, the twin girls, who were separated as babies and don't know of each other's existence, meet at a summer camp. Initially they are hostile to each other, playing a series of pranks. They are punished by being sent to live in a cabin together, where they figure out they are sisters. Susan's father (Brian Keith), lives on a ranch in California, while Sharon lives with her mother (Maureen O'Hara) as part of the upper crust in Boston.

The girls conspire to switch places so they can get to know the parent they've missed. When Sharon discovers that her father is going to marry a young woman (Joanna Barnes), the twins realize they must work to break that up and get their parents back together. Much of this takes place on a camping trip, where the sleek and sophisticated Barnes is undermined by both nature and the twins.

This all seems familiar (like I said, the plot is an old one, used again by Shakespeare), and the film has many sequels and a remake that gave Lindsay Lohan her film debut. But it's easy to take, and even touching at several moments, especially when the girls are reunited with their absent parents. But there is little mention of how cruel it was to not only separate them, but to deny them the knowledge of the other's existence.

The film is written and directed broadly by David Swift. The special effects, allowing Mills to be on screen with herself, looks good--initially much more use of a body double was to be used, but Walt Disney liked the way the split screen looked and that the film reconfigured to allow more use of it.