The Bank Dick

Egbert Sousé does not work. His family hates him, his wife shouts constantly and his mother-in-law wants him out of the house. He spends his days in the bar. One day, sitting on a bench outside the bank, a fleeing robber trips over him and is caught. He is declared a hero in the town. The bank manager gives him a job: he will be the bank guard. Around the same time a swindler sells him worthless shares, and to buy them he takes money from the bank. The next day the examiner arrives. Edward F. Cline directs. W. C. Fields takes the lead; he wrote the screenplay himself under a pseudonym. Fields was among the best known comedians of the period and played his own texts in most of his films. The form is episodic; the events are loosely joined and each scene builds its own joke. The humour is verbal and sardonic; the character is nowhere a good man and the narrative does not try to reform him. There is a section in which a film is being shot and Fields steps in as its director; that part mocks cinema directly. The chase at the end is the most cited part. It was taken into preservation by the Library of Congress. Who it is for: anyone curious about classic American comedy and W. C. Fields. Who it is not for: the structure is loose, the humour has dated, and the technical quality is old.