Watch The Bank Dick For Free

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Although not as funny as the same team's "Give a Sucker an Even Break" (1941) – even though it re-uses some of the same gags including the much-reprinted car chase finale – there's still plenty of typical Fields' humor in this entry. True, the plot does take up some precious screen time that could have been better used for comedy and Franklin Pangborn's study of J. Pinkerton Snoopington seems to run forever (although it does conclude with a marvelous gag which almost – I stress almost – makes up for all the tedium and marking time that has gone before. The rest of the support players are first class – particularly Russell Hicks and Grady Sutton. And music director. Charles Previn has provided a first-class score. In all, a very entertaining 74 minutes!

Henpecked Egbert Sousè (W. C. Fields) has comic adventures as a substitute film director and unlikely bank guard.Otis Ferguson was not so keen on it. He said, "When the man (W.C. Fields) is funny he is terrific... but the story is makeshift, the other characters are stock types, the only pace discernible is the distance between drinks or the rhythm of the fleeting seconds it takes Fields to size up trouble and duck the hell out." It is number 8 of Stanley Kubrick's ten most favorite films. I have to agree more with Kubrick on this one. Ferguson comes down too hard, as some of the things he criticizes are what make it such a great comedy. That sort of stuff may not fly today for sophisticated audiences, but Fields fits right in with Keaton, Chaplin and others... he is a natural successor to the silent age.

Happy to say I found this film a lot more amusing than "It's A Gift", reputed to be W.C. Fields' funniest. Made six years later than the earlier film, it's as if Fields realized that the repetitive nature of the bits in 'Gift' tended to wear the viewer out, whereas he presented each of his humorous situations here just once and moved the viewer on to the next. Yet at the same time he recycled some of the ideas from the 1934 flick, like the pronunciation of his last name (accent grave over the e, Souse/Bissonette), the irritable wife and a willingness to beat his kid to prove how much he loved him or her. I don't know if these themes were staples of his pictures because I haven't seen enough of them, so I guess I'll find out in due course.If you stay attentive to the opening credits you'll see one for Screenplay by Mahatma Kane Jeeves. Watching this film on Turner Classics and hosted by moderator Ben Mankiewicz, the origin of the name was explained by Fields' granddaughter, Dr. Harriet Fields. It was derived from one of Fields' sayings when he was getting ready to perform. He would ask for 'My hat, my cane and my shoes'. So a clever play on words, and as a word-smith, Fields sprinkles his story liberally with uncommon words like moon calf and jabbernowl. But he really caught my attention with a line that Hitchcock wound up using in his 1945 picture "Spellbound" when Ingrid Bergman says to Gregory Peck - "Professor, you're suffering from mogo on the go-go". However the phrase used here was 'mogo on the ga-go-go'.Anyway, I found the picture to be highly entertaining, and even a bit risqué at times, Fields' caricature of being a souse notwithstanding. Every time the Black Pussy Cat Café came into view I had to wonder what was on Fields' mind, other than ordering up a depth bomb to wet his whistle. Similarly I would never had considered his proboscis to be an 'adsatitious excrescious', and by that time I thought he might have been making it all up as he went.Above all, make sure you stick around for the well choreographed car chase near the end of the film. It reminded me a lot of the painstaking choreography Chaplin put into some of his pictures. The ditch diggers in particular stayed right on cue for their bit, and the near misses with the dueling road cars was epic timing at it's best. Something you take for granted today but back in the Forties I imagine it was quite the feat. With all that, one's best take away from the picture might well be the advice Egbert Souse offered his soon to be son-in-law on preparing for the future, even if it was offered in convoluted Fieldsian double talk - 'Don't wait too long in life'.

one of the most fascinating movies of W. C. Fields , it has rare gift to be more than a good comedy but an admirable work in which each detail impress and seems be perfect. it is not a surprise because W. C. Fields himself represents an entire universe. result - a fresh film, splendid for dialogs and gags, for the performance of Franklin Pangborn and for the flavor of fairy tale. a film who reminds basic values of society without be a moral lesson or only fun. part of long chain of films about the good American , it has the art to be a pure gem , using each nuance of script in wise manner. a movie from a lost period. so, a message. or only one of the greatest performances by W. C. Fields.