Ever Seen It: The Bank Dick (1940)

            Despite the presence of a W.C. Fields book gracing my bookshelf for the better part of a year, this was my first encounter with one of the artist’s films.  In fact, having not read the book, I could have recited absolutely nothing about the comic himself or about his work in general.  This simple 72 minute film seems an apt enough introduction to his style and persona and certainly lends support to an argument for me to see more.

            Fields plays a father who spends every morning at the bar and advantageously fumbles his way through nearly every encounter with another human being.  One morning the fellow human is a movie producer whose director maintains an inoperable state of drunkenness.  Unwittingly, he accepts Field’s assertions that he is a director who has worked with the likes of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. He then promptly changes the film in its entirety while working with the same cast and crew.  Meanwhile, he gets his daughter’s soon-to-be fiancé involved in embezzlement with a good-hearted con man.  We are not all too surprised when the finale finds him successfully dodging any and all troubles and coming out unscathed.

            The film, and likely Fields himself, should be categorized alongside Chaplin and Keaton, as well as the Marx brothers.  It combines gags and physical stunts as well as doltish obliviousness and innocently earned outcomes.  His simple screen presence seems both character and caricature.  It is very likely that we will have more to come on this subject manner.