Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #52583 in DVD
• Released on: 2000-08-22
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, Dolby, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 72 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
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

Customer Reviews

FIELDS OF NIGHTMARES
The world of W.C. FIELDS is a very peculiar one ; it is filled with clouds of smoke and empty bottles, with terrible children deserving to be lashed to blood and with nightmarish wives and mother-in-laws. Always ready to help his fellow companions, our poor hero must also cope with heartless bankers and dishonest crooks (yes, they exist ! ).

If you are a movie lover, this particular world deserves a royal place on your library's shelves, W.C. FIELDS playing, in my opinion, in the same league than Buster Keaton, Charles S. Chaplin, the Marx Brothers or Jerry Lewis. The League of the Champions of the Absurdness.

Nevertheless, the price of this Criterion release, without bonus features, except for english subtitles, could discourage the average amateur. THE BANK DICK lasts only 74 minutes but offers two or three scenes worthy to appear in an anthology of the best comic scenes ever filmed. I specially loved the car chase, involving three cars, a motorcycle and a W.C. FIELDS destructing his car while driving at 70 miles per hour. But dialogs are also extremely funny, completing the pleasure that you are certainly going to have with one of the Masters of comic movies.

A DVD dedicated to mother-in-laws.

NO synch problems on Criterion DVD
First of all, this is one of the funniest movies ever made. There is not one scene that isn't hillarious. As for one reviewer's comment that the sound and picture are out of synch, this is almost certainly a problem with the player's DSP chip (see Sound & Vision magazine's article on this; Sony knows all about it).

The Bank Dick stands tall, even amongst Fields' other brilliant movies, You're Telling Me and the sensational Its A Gift. Our hero, Egbert Souse (pronounced "Sue-Say") has a Married With Children existence--until he accidentally foils a bank robbery.

The Bank Dick has my all time favorite Fields line: J. Frothingham Waterbury, a stock swindler, says "I want to show you I'm honest in the worst way!".

Fields also paints a less than flattering picture of miserly bankers, the rich, and people who only treat you well when you have money. What makes this so funny, of course, is, its mostly true!

Essential W.C. Fields DVD
The Bank Dick is pure Fields and the best of his feature films (with My Little Chickadee a close second). The comedy is timeless; most of the jokes, although written 60 years ago , are relevant today. Supporting cast is brilliant. A must have for all classic comedy fans.