Directed by Norman Z. McLeod
Written by Jack Cunningham, Based on a play by W.C. Fields and J.P. McEvoy
Starring W.C. Fields, Kathleen Howard, Jean Rouverol, Julian Madison
USA, 1934
Not Rated
COMIC VISIONS OF HELL
One of the drawbacks of being a critical movie lover is that one begins to see through filmmakers’ magic and the power of the movies begins to wear off on you. Melodramas don’t move you the way they used to when you were younger and more naïve; musicals seem calculated and affected instead of being solidified dreams. And it’s harder to laugh at jokes in the movies. When you watch a great classic comedy, you know it’s funny, but all those gags have been used in current films that you’ve laughed at and the experience just isn’t what you know it could be. I hadn’t genuinely laughed at a movie in a long time when I first saw “The Dentist” about a year ago, and that masterpiece short reminded me how much I loved to laugh my ass off. It’s unfocused like so many W.C. Fields movies but there’s this one scene in which a woman (Elise Cavanna in a hyperphysical performance) is at the mercy of a malicious dentist, and the film keeps heightening the sheer hysteria of the moment with perverse insinuations as the patient/victim squirms in the chair. Her pain is so hilarious; we recognize her discomfort yet it’s strange and funny how such an ordinary situation could become pure horrific torture. Like the best Fields films, and like the best screwball comedies, the humor is suspenseful.
There is hardly any music in “The Dentist,” which gives the film an unnerving quality. It’s hard to comfort yourself with “It’s just a cartoonish little short” when it doesn’t quite feel that way. Neither does It’s a Gift, perhaps Fields’s crowning achievement, which is also without a substantial score. While the former film gave a horror element to a routine activity, the latter’s portrait of a man’s routine life is, apart from its sunny ending, a comic tragedy. Fields plays Harold Bissonette, a stout, bumbling owner of a general store whom everyone loves to pester. He lives in an itchy world that is very real but is more like hell itself. His daughter (Jean Rouverol) steals his mirror away from him while he’s trying to shave; his wife (Kathleen Howard) won’t stop nagging; a blind man shatters his shop’s door and the light bulbs; an angry customer demands for his cumquats. In the evening, he tries to find peace by sleeping on the porch but is kept awake by things that go bump in the night and a peculiar fellow looking for Carl LaFong. Finally, he believes his break has come when a relative dies and leaves him some money. His dream has always been to own an orange grove, so he buys one and the family moves to California only to find that the place is a dump and unable to yield fruit.
Fields’s brilliant reactions to the world crumbling around him make for sidesplitting moments, but there’s a pervasive bleakness here, which is only made clearer by the absence of music. The movie, directed by Norman Z. McLeod, is divided into four sequences and has a stagy rhythm because of its simplicity and because it incorporates sketches from Fields’s early vaudeville acts. In each segment, Mr. Bissonette suffers through continuous aggravation. He greets each annoyance and obstacle with composure and stoicism, and the tension of the movie just piles up because you’re certain this man will explode sooner or later. Fields, one of the truly great film comedians, must be appreciated with both eyes and ears. It’s a Gift relies on visuals as much as any silent film does. Most of the dialogue is inessential in terms of furthering the action. The scene on the porch, in particular, is filmed like a landslide of things that make you tick. So much of Fields’s marvelous performance lies in his weary posture and his sloth-like movement. And, of all the comedians I love, Fields is the greatest joy to listen to. Famous for ad-libbing, he can make every line sound improvised because his presence is so natural. He’s a loveable curmudgeon; he’s like the father in Rebel Without a Cause who lets everybody step on him. Fields has this way of raising and lowering his voice at the end of every one-liner that is simply priceless.
It’s a Gift is, indeed, a vision of hell on earth but, like that uproarious scene in “The Dentist,” it’s funny because we find it odd that the things that make our lives miserable are usually the tiny provocations. Fields, like that woman trapped in the patient’s chair, is in life’s cage; he’s living and making a living and trying to get a moment’s peace, and he can’t stop. Both films have a bizarre sadism, but in It’s a Gift, poor Mr. Bissonette seems to be the target of cosmic, supernatural anger; God keeps hurling these lightning bolts at him for no apparent reason. The character of his wife is such a fabulous exaggeration of nagging women; she’s like the snow queen, and Kathleen Howard matches Fields’s verbal style with her own brand of freakish musicality. There’s a similar home situation in The Bank Dick, which Fields wrote about half a decade later. The protagonist becomes successful and his cold, resentful wife and children immediately begin to love him.
Fields, who called alcohol his “medicine,” has the screen persona of an incessantly drunk man, and his movies are the feverish dreams of alcoholics. In The Bank Dick, the alcoholic is a man who happens to be incredibly lucky; in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, the liquor gets the alcoholic’s creative juices flowing. In Million Dollar Legs, his irritability wins him a medal at the Olympics. These films are even directed as if by drunks; they’re gloriously choppy and messy and they’re not literal-minded. But It’s a Gift is not a dream- it’s the nightmare of life- and Mr. Bissonette is the quiet drunk, the man who drinks behind closed doors because he wants to escape all the turbulence and chaos. It’s probably his most human film; Fields exposes a vulnerable side when his character is at the end of his rope, and Mrs. Bissonette’s renewed love for him at the end is real and tender. Fields is heroic in this movie, and why shouldn’t he be, even with his many vices? He is one of us, but he’s always one step ahead of us too because he isn’t defensive. He’s armed with the smartest, funniest, and most sophisticated one-liners to spit in the face of adversity.
By Andrew Chan [JUNE 26, 2001]