Sept. 27, 2010

W.C. Fields was a genius— a slap-happy surrealist who, much like his vaudeville and big-screen peers, the Marx Brothers, usually ran ahead of his time by several decades. Fields embarked on his film career when moving pictures were still in their infancy, but he wouldn’t become a genuine comic icon until the 1930s. His gifts were so significant he seems less a brilliant comedian these days than a registered trademark, the very embodiment of a particular form of American humor, heavy on the misanthropy.

And he drank like a fish.

Fields’ persistent references to alcohol and being deeply soused weren’t just an amusing affectation, like Jack Benny pretending to be a cheapskate or Bob Hope behaving like a sniveling coward. In real life, Fields poured back pints of gin with abandon, up to and beyond the point that his doctors told him he’d literally drink himself to death if he didn’t stop. He had a razor-sharp mind and was exceptionally well-read, and he finally keeled over from a disease that he somehow managed to choreograph as shtick, to the point that his most seriously demented film work - and I mean it’s crazy - hinged on a virtuous young man falling victim to the evils of drink.

“The Fatal Glass of Beer,” a short that runs a mere 18 minutes and 33 seconds, was officially directed by Clyde Bruckman but it has Fields’ fingerprints all over it. Although it may well be the least inventively photographed masterpiece in motion picture history, its derelict mis en scene was absolutely intentional.

Released in 1933, the picture is a takeoff on early stage melodramas that were aimed at fresh-off-the-boat immigrants, the kind of people who liked their entertainment blunt and speechy, with maybe a song, a dose of domestic sentimentality, and a moral thrown in for good measure. Fields also lands a series of sharp blows to the jaw of Depression-era Hollywood cheapies while proudly appearing in the exact thing that he mocks. A man’s gotta drink, after all.

Everything about “The Fatal Glass of Beer,” from its relentlessly uninteresting framing to its mismatched shots and stilted, often outlandish dialogue, feels bizarrely out of kilter with viewer expectations. Back when it was originally released, audiences and critics hated it, and Fields was accused by many people of being either lazy or jaded or both.

Oh, the Philistines. Again, the Marx Brothers were also adept at this sort of thing, although even “Duck Soup” seems like “Bridge on the River Kwai” in comparison. But “The Fatal Glass of Beer” bears an even closer relationship to the disjointed, free-for-all skits that the Monty Python troupe launched on an unsuspecting British public in the 1970s. Fields, like the Pythons, wasn’t about to tax himself by working up coherent segues between his comic musings, and if you weren’t on his wavelength, well, that was your tough luck.

Although he doesn’t get around to it in this particular picture, Fields wasn’t above kicking a baby in the ass to make his points….whatever those points might have been. As far as I can tell, the only purpose to “The Fatal Glass of Beer,” outside of its wacked-out deconstructionism, is to flatly illustrate that people are idiots. And who am I to argue with that?

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The “story” is set in “the Yukon” during a crippling “blizzard.” A starving trapper (that would be Fields) and his wife mourn the loss of their son, Chester, who traveled to the city and has gone missing for over a year. Those quotes in the first sentence are no accident, since Fields and Bruckman do absolutely nothing to encourage your suspension of disbelief. During one “outdoor” scene, Fields even comments that a mouthful snow he ingests tastes like cornflakes, since that’s exactly what movie snow was made of in those days.

In one of the opening scenes, Fields is visited by a local Mountie who implores the mourning father to re-sing the song he wrote about his beloved son’s downfall in the big city. Here it is, and take special note of the meticulous way Fields strums his autoharp so that he appears to actually be playing it, rather than simply miming to a soundtrack.

I like how Fields adds his own little review right there at the end. Throughout “The Fatal Glass of Beer,” he seems deeply embarrassed to be appearing in his own movie. How can you not love a song, though, that manages to rhyme “gentleman” and “delirium tremens?”

When I said the script is stilted before, I wasn’t kidding. As staccato as that song is, the dialogue is even worse (which is to say, “better.”) The characters’ creaky remarks are made all the more hilarious because they appear to think their every utterance is worthy of being carved into marble…a little trick the Coen brothers regularly employ nowadays. Take, for instance, the following observation, which Fields delivers when he suddenly breaks away from the action - Chester has unexpectedly returned to the cabin - to ponder this earthly vale of tears.

How do you even write that?! It’s absolutely pointless when you’re watching it. Imagine how it would look on paper. You get the feeling these guys were laughing their asses off while they filmed this, or at least Fields was.

Chester’s arrival sets the scene for a tearful dinner sequence, not that Fields’ character is initially inclined to join in. He’s too busy improperly comprehending how to dunk French bread into his soup.

Once Chester finally retires to his quarters, we enter my favorite part of the film. Since there’s an unexpected pause in the inanities, Pa decides he needs to…well…I’ll let Fields tell you what he’s up to.

I mean, really. That mismatched footage is so far beyond the realm of what anybody else in Hollywood was doing at the time, it seems more like a Luis Bunuel stunt. The first time I saw it when I stumbled upon “The Fatal Glass of Beer” on TV, I was practically crying (there’s an equally outré sled dog routine at the beginning of the movie.)

Does it make any sense to say that Fields was utterly precise in his lack of precision? “The Fatal Glass of Beer”’s guiding principle is to throw it at the wall and see if it sticks, and it takes real guts to do that when you’re a big name and people are expecting top-notch work out of you.

Fields, like so many great commercial artists, simply didn’t care what anybody thought and was happy to do whatever he wanted to do, then see if people laughed at it. If it didn’t work, he could shoot something else soon enough. That sense of freedom led to some of the more outlandish gags in movie history, and cemented his place in the upper echelon of comedy. How rare that Hollywood would give someone his head and let him rummage through it to see what he could find.

At this point, I’d like to wrap it up, but, once again, why write transitional material when another gag will do? So I’ll just have Pa put the cork in it for me.

(By the way, if you want to get "The Fatal Glass of Beer" from Netflix, go for the Criterion Collection’s “W.C. Fields— Six Short Films.” It's remastered and looks as good as it can look.)

Paul Tatara