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W.C. Fields, slim and mustached but already trapped in domestic purgatory. "His first mistake was the second wife" (Marie Shotwell), the "delicate child" is a burly stepson (Barnett Raskin) who sics the dog on him. Morning exercises with the broadcasting weightlifter (cp. Ozu's I Was Born, But...), a plate full of contempt at the breakfast table, even the wooden ass at the toy factory nods mockingly. "Since when has he had a say in anything?" His daughter (Mary Brian) is an oasis of encouragement, but he's a magnet for bad luck—he's promoted to bill-collector only to be sent to a brawling debtor, the horseshoe tossed over his shoulder naturally shatters a window. The turning point is a leonine metamorphosis, a stage mesmerist whose act uncorks the timorous protagonist's repressed fury, fits him with boxing gloves and sets him loose on the world. "The big noise in the house," a Gregory La Cava specialty in full swing, a pixilated jig to rouse the atrophied castrato. Unleashed as a jabbing go-getter, Fields swaps masochism for sadism: He steps into board meetings to lay down the law, crashes the mortified missus' tea party, and belts Junior hard enough to make the ceiling rattle. (The worn's turning leaves a trail of wrecked cars in its wake.) The bellicose spell dissipates yet society rewards its pugilists, at least up to a point: "Next time you're hypnotized, try to act like a rabbit." One fan is Renoir in La Chienne, down to the first husband's portrait replaced by Fields in the Napoleon pose. With Claude Buchanan, Frederick Burton, Frank Evans, and Edward Roseman. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |