The Bank Dick (The Criterion Collection)
by Edward F. Cline
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Cora Witherspoon, Evelyn Del Rio, Jessie Ralph, Una Merkel, W.C. FieldsDirector: Edward F. Cline
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Black & White, Dolby, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 72 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-08-22
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of The Bank Dick (The Criterion Collection)
Movie Review: Beer running over your Grandmother's paisley shawl
Summary: 5 Stars
Field's diehard fans debate whether this film or It's A Gift was his greatest. I prefer It's A Gift, but I still love this film very much.
Here the family relations have completely disintegrated to the point that little Evelyn Del Rio is bouncing a ketchup bottle among other things off his head. It's more a state of war with Fields as the crazy grandfather rather than Fields as the henpecked husband.
Some of Fields's regulars are here: Grady Sutton plays Og Oggilby ("...sounds like a bubble in a bathtub...") who is not an imbecile but very much a "luddie duddie." Russell Hicks is great as J. Frothingham Waterbury,the crooked beefstake (beefsteak?) mines stock grifter. Shemp Howard (of the Three Stooges)plays Joe the Bartendar. Bill Wolfe is funny just standing there in the Black Pussy Cat Cafe and being examined by Dr. Stall. Jan Duggan is funny as the mother of the little boy with the cap gun Fields attempts to apprehend. Franklin Pangborn almost steals the movie as J. Pinkerton Snoopington, bank examiner.
The plot? It's "...improbable, impossible" as Franklin Pangborn said in another Fields movie. It only makes sense because Fields is in it. It ends in a classic chase scene that even manages to include a 1930's scene out of the WPA or CCC. But along the way we are treated to a double noggin of his rich plays on the language and his willingness to play the rascal.
This was one of the movies that got frequent play in the W.C. Fields
revival of the mid to late 1960's.
Summary of The Bank Dick (The Criterion Collection)
W.C. Fields stars as an unemployed, henpecked drunk who spends most of his time at the Black Pussy Cat café. Things take a turn for the absurd when he unwittingly captures a bank robber and lands a job as a security guard. Written by Fields under the pseudonym Mahatma Kane Jeeves and featuring one of his most hilarious performances, The Bank Dick is an undisputed classic of American comedy. Criterion is proud to present Fields' last major film in a new digital transfer, with English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired.High on the list of W.C. Fields's achievements is this 74-minute feature from 1940, rich in his brilliantly rambling inspiration. Fields plays Egbert Sousé (pronounced Soo 'zay, of course), who manages to foil a bank robbery, tilt a glass in the Black Pussy Cafe, and marry his daughter to Og Oggilby (Grady Sutton) before the closing credits. Maintaining his usual and deliberate half-step behind the rest of the world, Fields's characteristic persona gets a truly worthy movie here that always seems, wonderfully, to be on the verge of racing ahead of him. --Tom Keogh
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