Pool Sharks

This was, of course, the first moving picture featuring W. C. Fields. It is just so-so, if you didn't know who it was and if it wasn't so historical for being Fields' first, it probably would attract little attention. Fields truly was more a verbal performer, and it would take the advent of sound to truly cement his niche in motion picture history. But, as such, it is an interesting historical short, has a few chuckles, but little more. At the time Fields was working for the Ziegfeld Follies and was doing a similar trick pool table routine in his act (although how this could all have really been appreciated by a large audience in a huge theater, I have no idea...) and what is seen here is a camera trick version of what would have been accomplished mechanically on his rigged table. The pool game is the highlight of this short, the rest concerns vying for the attention of a woman at an outdoor picnic (no doubt using outdoors for the lighting). If you enjoy Fields and must see all of his work, or want to see his first efforts on film, definately worth seeking out.

It's interesting to see this film finally. W.C. wears a bushy black mustache and looks a lot thinner than in his later movies. There's lots of slapstick and sight gags in this, since it's a silent film, and it even has the impressive use of stop motion in several scenes with the billiard balls. Incredibly, Fields looks a lot like Steve Martin, especially in the pool room sequence. Whether it's funny or not is hard to say. It was interesting, but not really funny. More of a curiosity piece, but worth seeing just the same.

W.C. Fields is one of my many gods of cinema. I've probably seen more of his films than most people, since I compulsively watched (and taped) all of his movies when he was TCM's Star of the Month last June. In fact, I did get a little sick of him from overexposure, and there are several I still need to watch. I just got the Criterion "6 Short Films" disc and watched the only two of them I hadn't seen, including The Pool Sharks. Well, this one is pretty lame. It's his first film, and it's a silent one. You would be absolutely right in thinking that the medium of silent films doesn't suit The Great Man at all. All this film is is gross slapstick. Some of it is funny, but nothing hilarious. It's very well worth seeing, especially for the surreal stop-motion animated pool ball scene. It's actually very difficult to tell what's going on in that sequence, but it looks neat. And if you watch it frame by frame, you will notice a goof: the animator's hands are caught in one of the shots on the left side of the screen! 6/10.

This is W.C. Fields' first movie. It's an 11 minutes short silent film that tells the story of two rivals vying for the affection of a girl. After some physical comedy that we'd later see the Three Stooges use (like grabbing the person's nose with one hand and smacking it off with the other), the two decide on a game of pool to settle the score. We get an amusing display of early special effects that is used to manipulate the pool balls in a humorous fashion. And speaking of humorous fashion, Fields has a very bizarre mustache. This is a fun little silent film, featuring a young and slimmer Fields.

Given its significance in the career of the great comic W.C. Fields, "Pool Sharks" would certainly be worth seeing for its historical interest alone. In itself, it's probably just an average feature for its time and genre, and it doesn't give Fields the chance to shows his greatest strengths, but it is fun to see him in such an early screen appearance.

You can see the strong influence of Chaplin and Keystone, as the plot and all the characters are patterned after those styles. Fields plays one of two rivals for the hands of a girl, and his character gets involved in the kind of manic slapstick that characterized a great many short comedies in the mid-1910s. Nothing wrong with that at all, and while "Pool Sharks" in itself would not stand out, it probably would not have left too many of its original viewers disappointed, either.

Besides the slapstick, there are some visual effects with the pool table, and while the special effects technique is rudimentary, it's amusing enough.

For the most part, Fields himself just has to keep up with the madcap pace, and cannot do some of the things that he did best, yet you can see his talent when he has the chance to show it.