It’s a Gift (Norman Z. McLeod, 1934): USA

Reviewed by Byron Potau. Viewed on DVD.

Considered by many to be W.C. Fields best film, It’s a Gift has also earned acclaim as one of cinema’s funniest films of all time. While I can acquiesce that it may be the best of Fields’ films it certainly does not rank in the funniest of all time. Sure Fields can be funny sometimes, but the film is the equivalent of a run on sentence. It has its moments, but only after exhausting every possibility of a joke in a given situation.

Harold Bissonette (W.C. Fields) owns a grocery store, but harbors a desire to own an orange grove in California. When his uncle kicks off and leaves him money he is finally able to buy his orange grove, much to the dismay of his wife. He packs up his family and heads out west only to find the orange grove he purchased is not what he had in mind.

Many of the scenes are basically vaudeville like comedy sketches that try to bleed every ounce of comedy out of the situation that it can. Some of the jokes work and some don’t. The problem is that this becomes so tedious for the audience to watch hit and miss for so long that it is not long until they are simply bored with the scene long before the scene is over. For example, Harold is trying to go to sleep, but is interrupted by a phone call and his wife’s incessant nagging. When he goes outside to sleep on the bench his slumber is interrupted by a noisy milkman, a baby hitting him with grapes shoved down a hole from above, a coconut that makes a slow and noisy descent down the staircase, a stranger looking for Carl LaFong who feels the need to spell the name every time he says it, the bench breaking on one side, the upstairs neighbor’s daughter noisily hopping downstairs and then mundanely conversing with her mother who is upstairs, and Harold’s wife popping out every so often to nag him about one thing or another before going back in. It all gets a bit tiresome after awhile.

Another problem is that the characters that annoy Harold equally annoy us. Harold’s unnaturally shrewish, nagging wife is like nails on a chalkboard. The blind and nearly deaf Mr. Muckle wreaks so much havoc in Harold’s store we finally have to ask ourselves why Harold does not just kick him out of his store for good. Many of these characters might be funny if it were not for the fact that we are just as annoyed as he is.

Despite all of this the film still has several very funny moments. Fields is virtually a one man show and if you are going to watch a W.C. Fields film this is one of the best of them. Just be prepared to have some patience with the film.