It's a Gift (1934)

It's a Gift (1934) was the first W.C. Fields film I saw, and is probably his most accessible one; it's also my favorite film of his, and the one I consider his best. In it Fields plays Harold Bissinett (one of a series of funny names for Fields' characters), a middle-aged grocer who buys an orange grove in California after his deceased uncle leaves him an inheritance. However, this being a W.C. Fields film, the plot is only a loose framework for a series of comic routines.

The funniest one (and one of the funniest scenes in any of Fields' films) involves Fields having to simultaneously deal with an irate customer screaming about an order of cumquats and a clumsy, blundering blind man who inadvertently smashes his merchandise. The scene of said blind man managing to cross a busy street without getting hit by sheer dumb luck is one of the great loopy, surreal gags in a Fields film.

Another highlight of the film is the scene of Fields trying to sleep on his front porch despite a variety of annoyances and distractions conspiring to keep him awake. (This basic premise was later used by Chuck Jones in his Three Bears cartoon "What's Brewin', Bruin?" [1948].) These include the clinking of a milkman's bottles, a coconut bouncing down the steps, an obnoxious insurance salesman, and Baby LeRoy dropping grapes on him.

Fields' persona is known for being a drunken, surly misanthrope, a man who hates children, animals, and most of the people around him. There are two basic variations on that persona: the scheming con man (seen in "The Golf Specialist" [1930] and You Can't Cheat an Honest Man [1939]), and the beleaguered family man (seen in this film and The Man in the Flying Trapeze [1935]). Fields' character in this film doesn't have the harsh edges of his ones in "The Dentist" (1932) or The Bank Dick (1940), although he's not exactly sunshine and roses: when his wife forces him to split a sandwich with his son, he folds the meat into half and gives his son the half without any.

This film features many of the prototypical elements of Fields' films: the nagging, overbearing wife, the teenage daughter and her boyfriend. A key element of the film's comedy is Fields' frustration: he can hardly take a puff of a cigar or a swig of whiskey behind his wife's back, his customers yell at him, and he even has trouble getting some sleep. He responds to these annoyances with sarcastic remarks and mutterings under his breath, something Fields characters are always wont to do.

When Fields arrives in California and finds his orange grove, he's met with a worthless tract of weed-strewn land and a dilapidated shack not even the Joads would find fit to live in. However, he soon finds out that a land developer wants it for a grandstand adjoining a racetrack and drives a hard bargain to get the most he can for it. Fields' negotiations with the developer lead to one of the great exchanges in his films. "You're drunk," he says. "Yeah, and you're crazy," Fields responds. "But I'll be sober in the morning, and you'll be crazy for the rest of your life."