USA 74m Dir: Edward F. Cline Key Cast: W.C. Fields
This was my first exposure to W.C. Fields, the actor and writer who is best known for his comedy films of the 1930s and early 1940s. Fields basically always played the same character, a misanthrope, drunk egotist who hated children and dogs. Here Fields plays Egbert Sousé who pretty much fits that description though there's little of the kid/dog hatred here. Quite a lot about his character reminded me of Homer Simpson.
There isn't really much of a plot here, it's more like a series of sketches. Souse somehow gets a job as a film director before then accidentally stopping a robbery and being hired as a 'bank dick' which turns out is what we would call a security guard, though other interpretations of the phrase are still an accurate description of the main character. Souse then meets a swindler and convinces son-in-law Og to borrow funds from the bank to buy shares and then has to attempt to hide this illegal activity when an auditor arrives at the bank.
I found the comedy here as really dated. I think the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton still stand up fantastically well and even some early sound acts like Laurel and Hardy remain very watchable. W.C. Fields though just feels stuck his era. Fields' characters were supposed to be pretty awful yet still somehow sympathetic but I struggled to find anything at all to like about Souse in this film. Combine that with the fact that there's no plot and I struggled to get much out of it.
Reviewers of the time got more out of it but it's clear they had some of the same quibbles as I did. The New Yorker said "the movie even smacks of those old days so exactly that you almost believe it must be a revival of some classic" and though they said it didn't feel old-fashioned at the time it certainly does now. I think the sense is that there's nothing new or radical about the film. The New Republic was more critical saying "the story is makeshift, the other characters are stock types, the only pace discernible is the distance between drinks or the rhythm of the fleeting seconds it takes Fields to size up trouble and duck the hell out." That review has aged much better than the film itself.
A film that feels very much of it's time and hasn't aged anywhere nearly as well as Charlie Chaplin and other comedies of a similar time.
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