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It's a Gift (BFI Film Classics)

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There are two or three films that Simon Louvish could have written about, like THE BANK DICK or his last, surreal, masterpiece NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK. But this is the film that pulls together both his film career and his stage career. Many of the key skits in the film, like the drug store scene and the delicious scene on the back porch, resurrected scenes from his various stage routines. Louvish - who wrote perhaps the best single book on Laurel and Hardy - packs more information about Fields in this book than one might consider possible. You get an overview of his life, his stage career, his early and late film career, and the major events of his life. In 65 pages of text, which are filled with a huge number of photos, Louvish provides an impossibly full portrait of one of the great figures in America cinema.

I've become a huge fan of the BFI Film Classics series. Almost every one drives you straight into the heart of some of the great films in movie history. This one is not just a great film in general, but one of the best books in the entire series. Louvish has a great understanding of this entire period of American comedy. It was a unique period, with comedians able to hone their skills in vaudeville and the national theater circuit. The closest we can come today is the comedy club circuit, but this is a comedy that consists of one liners, not the performance of entire skits that could be perfected on stage and be transferred to the film.

IT'S A GIFT, much like the early Marx Brothers's films, brings to screen the best of the vaudeville tradition. Louvish's little book provides a wonderful investigation of one of Fields's most brilliant films, a film with deep roots in his stage career.