by Miguel E. Rodriguez
DIRECTOR: Norman Z. McLeod
CAST: W.C. Fields, Kathleen Howard, Jean Rouverol, Tommy Bupp, Baby LeRoy
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 94%
PLOT: A henpecked New Jersey grocer makes plans to move to California to grow oranges, despite the resistance of his overbearing wife.
I have pondered and pondered for almost a week now, and I still have no idea how the title of It’s a Gift relates to its plot, unless it refers to the comic abilities of the film’s star, W.C. Fields. Perhaps it refers to the bequest of a dead uncle that sets the plot in motion. Or maybe it’s a situation where the studio heads couldn’t think of a title and just picked one that was languishing on a stack of papers somewhere.
Not that it matters. It’s a Gift is a tiny gem of a comedy with a plot as inconsequential as its title. As fate would have it, this is the only W.C. Fields movie I’ve seen, but I’m prepared to bet that this is the best W.C. Fields I’m likely to see. The only other one on my radar is The Bank Dick (1940), but it’s hard for me to imagine how it could top It’s a Gift for pure slapstick comedy. Or not slapstick exactly…it’s a weird, wonderful combination of slapstick with theatrical farce, like The Three Stooges or the Marx Brothers but with a shortened leash. In this movie, Fields is not a wacky character like Groucho or Curly…he’s us, and that makes it more effective. (That was part of Buster Keaton’s genius, too, but that’s for another review…)
Fields plays Harold Bissonette (pronounced “Bee-so-NAY”), a cosmically patient man living in New Jersey with an overbearing wife, Amelia; a thoughtless teenage daughter, Mildred; and a rambunctious young son, Norman. How rambunctious? He wheels around their apartment on roller skates; when Harold tells him to stop, he obliges by removing only one skate. If I had tried that with my parents, I wouldn’t be alive to talk about it.
Harold’s relationship with his family is defined by their total indifference to what he wants and his desire to avoid conflict at all costs. Right at the outset, when he tries to shave in the bathroom, his daughter blithely steps between him and the mirror so she can do her hair and brush her teeth. Rather than raise an objection (which he clearly wants to do), he improvises by hanging a travel mirror from the pull chain on the overhead light bulb. The mirror spins slightly, leaving him no option but to shave in stages whenever the mirror faces him. This scene beautifully defines both characters with barely a word spoken. [Marc, if you’re reading this, this kind of thing is right up your alley.]
The plot involves a dead uncle who has left Harold a decent chunk of change. Harold’s wife, Amelia, looks forward to moving to a nice house and buying some nice dresses, but Harold has something else in mind. He wants to move the family to California and raise oranges on an orange grove he’s bought from his daughter’s boyfriend, or the boyfriend’s father, or something, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is, the boyfriend discovers the orange grove is a wreck, but Harold refuses to listen and moves ahead with his plan.
Before they move to California, though, there are two hysterical sequences to get through. One takes place at the general store Harold runs in town. His day at the store plays out as one of the worst (and funniest, for us) days of his life. It involves an angry customer demanding kumquats, which is funny all by itself because in real life, it’s impossible to demand kumquats and be angry. Try it sometime. There’s also a regular customer, Mr. Muckle, an elderly gentleman who is blind and hard of hearing; he carries an ear trumpet and a large cane which he swings indiscriminately in front of him, destroying anything breakable in his way. There is something Matthau-esque in Harold’s desperate attempts to get those kumquats while also keeping the deaf Mr. Muckle away from his light bulb display. And then there’s the clueless assistant and the meat locker and the child in the overhead basket and a barrel of molasses and so on and so on. No WONDER Harold wants to get out of town. Another day at that store and they’d have to carry his customers out in a hearse.
The second sequence, and by far the funniest in the whole film, involves Henry trying to get some sleep on the front porch because his wife won’t stop nagging him about using all their inheritance to buy an orange grove. This marvelous set piece involves him trying to sleep on a rickety porch swing while his upstairs neighbor engages in conversation with people below, a baby drops grapes on his noggin through a hole in his ceiling/the baby’s floor, the swing threatens collapse at any moment, a random coconut manages to bounce down three flights of stairs, and he is “accosted” by an insurance salesman. What makes this scene work so well is not the slapstick nature of the scene, which plays out like a Looney Tunes cartoon, but Harold’s dogged determination to get some damn SLEEP, despite the universe’s intention to make it utterly impossible. Fields here proves himself a master of understated reactions. Where the Stooges or perhaps even Groucho would resort to yelling or lobbing insults, Fields projects a world-weariness, as if this kind of thing is always happening to him, HAS always happened to him, and WILL happen to him in the future. He loses his temper only once, and even then, he doesn’t resort to yelling: he just goes inside and gets his shotgun.
This and the grocery store scene are the highlights of the film. After they pack everything into their car and hit the road, it becomes a series of episodes before they finally arrive at the orange grove he bought, which is, as promised by his daughter’s boyfriend, a wreck. What happens next, I wouldn’t dream of revealing, except to say it’s as implausible as it is satisfying.
While It’s a Gift will never be mentioned in the same breath as anything by Capra or Wilder in the screenplay department, it works impeccably as a vehicle for W.C. Fields and his often-imitated/never-quite-duplicated brand of comedy. (Walter Matthau came close.) I haven’t seen enough of his films to be scholarly in my approach, but I can report that it made me laugh much more than I thought it would. That’s all I can really ask for in a comedy, so I’m not going to try to break it down too much. I’ll just roll with it, like Harold.
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 