The Bank Dick (Edward Cline, US, 1940)

The Bank Dick is the culmination of Fields's studies of small-town American morality, in which he puts the ax in axioms of wealth through hard work, happiness through wealth, and propriety through Protestantism. The story itself is an anarchic twisting of film conventions, a series of Fieldsisms passing for plot and leading to the inevitable (and brilliant) chase scene. It centers on husband and father Egbert Sousé (the name reflects his preferred state), to whom there is, thankfully, no place like home; he chooses for his castle the Black Pussy Cat Saloon. Through incredible luck and almost no effort at all, Sousé acquires riches and catapults his family from normalcy to bogus graciousness, but his own officiousness and slippery indifference were never dependent on wealth—only on the Black Pussy Cat Saloon.

• Written by Mahatma Kane Jeeves (W. C. Fields). With W. C. Fields, Cora Witherspoon, Una Merkel, Franklin Pangborn. (74 mins, B&W, 35mm, From Universal)

Preceded by:
The Fatal Glass of Beer (Clyde Bruckman, US, 1933)
An absurdist masterpiece set in the Yukon.
(19 mins, B&W, 35mm, From Cohen Media)

Total running time: 93 mins