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best movie i've ever seen.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

W. C. Fields specialized in two kinds of characters, tricksters and henpecked husbands. "It's A Gift" works as a showcase of Fields in the latter department.Fields is Harold Bissonette, pronounced "bis-son-ay," a store clerk who dreams of an orange grove to call his own. His nagging wife Amelia (Kathleen Howard) just can't wait to tick off all the ways Harold ticks her off in as loud a voice as possible. Harold puts up with this as he plots to buy his orange grove despite her persistent objections."What did I say last?" she demands at the end of one tirade."Yes, yes, every word of it," a distracted Harold meekly replies.If you are a die-hard W. C. fan, it's not hard to recommend "It's A Gift." It's a series of quintessential setpieces of Fieldsian slow burns and double-speak. There's not much to be said for the plot, as you shouldn't have to pay more attention to it than Fields and his team of writers did. The point is to get Fields in various messes, and this "It's A Gift" does with brisk efficiency.Plenty of famous bits make their way on screen. The infamous Carl LaFong is name-dropped and name-spelled for eternity, and there's of course the biggest cinematic nod in the direction of the kumquat industry, though unlike Mr. LaFong they get the name spelled wrong. Everyone remembers that scene where Harold tries to whack his son ("Well, he's not going to tell me I don't love him!") and when he comes up with a Churchillian reply when accused of being drunk.The question of enjoying "It's A Gift" boils down to how much you embrace "aggravation comedy," where the humor is built into annoying situations made more so through sheer repetition. I can only take so much of Harold dodging customers in his store, or wrestling with a deck chair. A long sequence showcases Harold trying to sleep on a porch while a milkman, a coconut, a salesman, and a squeaky clothesline all conspire against him. I can't help but chuckle a few times, but am always happy when the scene ends.Harold is a fascinating character, a beaten man who is the author of his own destruction. He bought an orange ranch even after knowing it was a lemon, lets a blind man smash everything in his store, and of course married Amelia. But he's still Fields, and manages to work his way through his self-created turmoil to a surprisingly upbeat, if left-field, conclusion.That's my favorite part of the film, but you can't say enough for the able support of Kathleen Howard. Her Amelia is a wonderful shrew, kind of likable in her querulous way. She nags Harold even in her sleep, and her line readings are deliriously skewed in the way they seem to fall heavy on nearly every other syllable. "Don't be kicking Norman's skates around!" she huffs after Harold does a header slipping on one of his son's roller-skates, as if Harold did it just to annoy her. Considering this is Fields, maybe he did.Director Norman Z. McLeod isn't much talked about even among film students, though he may be the only man who directed major vehicles for Fields, the Marx Brothers, Harold Lloyd, and Danny Kaye. He knew how to work with comedy stars, and here keeps Fields at the center of the action.Watching "It's A Gift" can be hard on the nerves, but it's also a treat for the funny bone with a good heart discernible amid the mayhem.

If you put yourself in W.C. Fields' shoes, you'll find many of the predicaments he goes through more believable seeing them through his eyes. He starts his day with his obnoxiously selfish family, continues it with a bad day at work, and concludes it at home with more frustration than the first two parts of his day put together. The film then moves on as the family finds adventure on the road that would drive a tea totaler to drink.The premise of the film surrounds a dead relative's bequest to Fields who buys an orange grove in California. Unfortunately, these oranges end up being the size of grapes. Sour grapes for Field's harpy wife Katherine Howard who spends the entire film nagging Fields into an early alcoholic grave. Obnoxious neighbors, customers and assorted others help annoy Fields in hysterically funny ways that remain identifiable with audiences today and are among film comedy's classic moments.Try not to laugh as Fields deals with an irate customer demanding 10 pounds of cumquat's and a blind man in the store near a display of light bulbs. Baby LeRoy is also on hand in a top-billed but basically minor role as the child of one of the neighbors. The scene where Fields tries to avoid his nagging wife by sleeping outside on a swing is also classic. This is the type of film that will make you attempt to be less obtrusive to people around you lest you become like the man annoying Fields looking for someone named Carl LaFong. (Big L-Small A, Big F...you get my drift....)

One needs only to mention the porch-sequence, or the frustrating business with Mr. Muckle. Of all the films W.C. Fields appeared in, IT'S A GIFT may stand as the most consistently funny of them, or for that matter the most beloved. This praise might puzzle the casual by-passer; it's rather depressing, isn't it, the sight of an exhausted man simply nodding to his wife's frustrated remark "I've given you the best years of my life!" Well, generally speaking, perhaps. However, W.C. Fields was hardly a "general" comedian; one of his trademarks was to pull great comedy out of dysfunctional family life. Furthermore, the atmosphere he'd evoke through this cynical comedy of his would often appear close to resembling real life, so much so that the attempts would have fallen flat had they been treated by other hands. Fields is cast as the grocery-store owner Harold Bissonette (pronounced Bisson-AY when his wife's around), a sort of everyman whose big dream is to settle down in California and grow oranges. His dominant wife's skepticism notwithstanding, Harold buys an orange ranch with the few bucks the family has left. Inevitably, things turn out not quite as expected…By the time IT'S A GIFT was released towards the end of 1934, W.C. Fields had only recently become a name to behold among the movie-going public, at least whereas his work in sound films is concerned. The comedian had, however, been a well known stage presence for years, not only in vaudeville but also on Broadway. It was thus quite inevitable that Fields throughout his career as a movie star would often turn to his theatrical roots in order to get inspired; as such, IT'S A GIFT is only one of numerous examples. Based on a play written by Fields and J.P. McEvoy, the story had in fact made it onto the screen nearly a decade before, as the silent film THE OLD ARMY GAME. Although the original film also featured Fields as the struggling grocery-store owner, it didn't work that well out the first time around. One reason to its failure is often cited to be the absence of sound. Indeed, the brilliance of the famous sequence with Fields trying to get a few hours of sleep on the porch owes some debt to the use of sound effects, such as the terrorizing clunks of a coco-nut going down several stairs. However, of equal significance, I think, is the focus on character consistency which is far more present in IT'S A GIFT than its silent proceeder. The fact that Fields obviously took his character more into consideration in this later film may be one of the major reasons why it stands so well to this day, still forcing us helpless viewers to laugh our heads off at something which, esthetically speaking, looks pretty damn old. It's hilarious in itself that helpless Fields is forced to treat Mr. Muckle in kind manner while an impatient costumer roars for kumquats, and I defy anyone not to howl with laughter when a certain "Carl LaFong!" is mentioned. But what makes these sequences into a coherent entirety is the fact that we truly care about Fields. We may laugh harder and harder for each time his situation turns worse, but never without a tiny undercurrent hope for him to succeed the next time around.IT'S A GIFT was well-received upon its initial release, and marked a further step for Fields' approaching status as a household name. More than seventy-five years later, the comedy holds up possibly even better, as Fields' contemporary audiences had no way of telling how much ahead of his time the comedian actually was. He's able to make the phrase "I hate you--GET OUT!" sidesplitting. Enough said, but PLEASE open the door for Mr. Muckle!!

There is considerable fun to be had in watching this fine old comedy; such expert timing, with Fields proving master of the slow-burning visual gag and also the offhand, unremittingly sour retort.Raymond Durgnat wrote extensively on Fields in his book on early Hollywood comedy, "The Crazy Mirror", as has David Thomson in his Biographical Dictionary of Film. These critics rightfully see Fields as embodying a certain isolationism in the American soul, a reluctance to go along with the cosy family values often proffered by Hollywood. As Geoff Brown argues in his Time Out review, "It's a Gift" is 'Fields' definitive study in the horrors of small town family life.' Few comedies of this era match it in terms of avoiding easy sentiment and padding: perhaps only "Duck Soup" comes to mind. It was still a few years before the screwball comedies fully found their feet, with the magnificent likes of "My Man Godfrey" (1936) and "Bringing Up Baby" (1938)."It's a Gift" is as gloriously chaotic as the best of the Marx Brothers, as precisely measured as the best Jacques Tati, but it is imbued with an irascible philosophy all of its own. There are some truly wonderful set-pieces: the kumquats scene and the slow build of WCF's time on his makeshift bed on the outer landing, to name two examples.