Pool Sharks

Pool Sharks was a short subject film made in New York while W.C. Fields was in the Ziegfeld Follies. It must have been work for a day or two when they didn't have matinées and Fields co-stars with another silent screen comedian Ben Ross who never quite had the career Fields did. These are the only two names in the cast. We don't even get to see the name of the girl these two are fighting over.

After some slapstick attempts of oneupmanship with the girl watching the two take it to a poolroom with her and a crowd watching Fields and Ross square off over the green felt table. Naturally we don't see the color.

At this point I was expecting to see something like the pool game that was prominent in Six Of A Kind. Instead I got to see some crude animation as both these guys make some impossible shots that even Minnesota Fats would have said were impossible.

Without the voice, but those famous reactions to life that Fields was later famous for in the Thirties are all present in Pool Sharks. A must for fans of the great comic cynic W.C. Fields.

This silent movie is only really of interest to me as the first screen appearance of W.C. Fields. If Fields had not subsequently become the great movie comedian of twenty years later, I am sure this movie would be of no interest to me or others who have been drawn to watching it.

I hope that nobody comes to this movie expecting to see Fields' famous pool table routine that he frequently used through his successful stage career. Although the idea for this movie may have been to reproduce that routine for the screen, the final decision was to use animated shots of pool balls to create the comedy of that part of the film. For a screen appearance of Fields' pool table routine, go to the movie "Six of a Kind".

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.

This W. C. Fields film truly is representative of the time in which it was made. In 1915, most silent comedies were pure slapstick--with lots of punching, slapping and pratfalls and hardly any plot. The films were mostly acted "off the cuff" with no detailed script and as a result, the movies seem rough and not particularly memorable in most cases. This movie is about average for the time--but in no way does it appear like the character Mr. Fields played in his later films. It's really a shame, as the movie could have just as easily starred any silent comedian of the day.

Fields and another guy inexplicably dislike each other (you can tell due to all the slapping and hitting). They challenge each other to a pool competition and both men proceed to make some totally impossible shots. This part was awfully silly and COULD have been good, but the trick cinematography was done poorly and looks totally fake--even by 1915 standards. If they had just sped up the film, it would have come off perfectly. Other than that, nothing else stands out in my mind. It's just another silent slapstick comedy.

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.