From the Shelf: The Bank Dick (1940, Edward Cline)
Acquired: Late 2003 or early 2004, whenever it was that Criterion put their disc out of print.
Seen before?: Once, in August of 2004.
“During Fields’ career, industry standards required good to be rewarded and evildoing punished, but in “The Bank Dick” Fields plays an alcoholic misanthrope who lies, cheats and steals and is rewarded with wealth and fame.” - Roger Ebert
I can’t really improve on that. It cuts right to the heart of The Bank Dick - it’s about an absolute rotter of a man who has everything he wants essentially handed to him by a stroke of luck. If there’s a god in the universe of this film, he’s a capricious trickster god. But you know what? Assholes can also be very funny, especially when they’re as sly, unflappable and weirdly charming as W.C Fields’s Egbert Souse. The Bank Dick is barely a film, held together by baling wire and spittle and Fields’s inimitable personality. It runs around, follows dead ends, speaks nonsense and indulges gags that strike Fields’s fancy whether or not they fit the mockery of a story. But it’s about as funny as a barely-there film can get, with a crazily discursive energy that drags the film through its lurches, fits and starts.
Something that struck me this time around: The sequence where Fields commandeers directorial command of a Hollywood flick is as random as anything else in the film. Its inclusion could certainly be justified via a simple, “Well, why wouldn’t it be there?” But think of this - Fields talks his way into the production because the actual director, a comedy veteran, has gone on a week-long bender and can’t do the job. Sounds to me like a rather nasty caricature of Clyde Bruckman and the making of Man on the Flying Trapeze.
Up next: Baked goods!
