Pool Sharks

Pool Sharks
Directed by Edwin Middleton
Produced by Franco Cristaldi
Written by W.C. Fields
Starring W.C. Fields
Bud Ross
Distributed by Mutual Film Corporation
Release dates
 September 19, 1915 (U.S.)
Running time
 15 min.
Country United States
Language Silent

Pool Sharks (also sometimes known as The Pool Shark) is a 1915 silent short film. The film is notable for being the film acting and writing debut of W. C. Fields, and also features an early stop-motion animation scene, during a game of pool.

Plot summary

Following a standard style of the era, the film is a romantic slapstick comedy short. Fields and his rival (played by Bud Ross) vie over the affections of a woman. When their antics get out of hand at a picnic, it is decided that they should play a game of pool. Both of them are pool sharks, and after the game turns into a farce, a fight ensues. Fields throws a ball at his rival, who ducks. The ball flies through the window and breaks a hanging goldfish bowl, soaking the woman they are fighting over and leaving goldfish in her hair. She storms into the pool hall and rejects both men.

Production

Casting

Fields helped make this film in New York City, taking time off from the Ziegfeld Follies, as publicity for the films pointed out. Vaudeville was Fields' primary vocation, and it would be nine years before he made his next known film, the 1924 film Janice Meredith

Fields wore his obviously fake moustache in this film, as he did in all of his silent films. His character and mannerisms bear some resemblance to Charlie Chaplin's, although the persona Fields later developed in his sound comedies is foreshadowed during the picnic scene, when Field's character dumps a small child out of a chair so that he can steal it to get closer to the woman he is chasing.

Animation

The animators hands being seen in a poorly edited sequence in the Billiards scene

Fields was an expert juggler. As with his early films, Pool Sharks was intended to highlight a pool ball juggling act that featured in the actor's vaudeville show. In the final film, however, there is only a brief shot of Fields juggling several billiard balls, as his act was largely replaced with several poorly edited stop motion sequences depicting impossible shots, such as the balls jumping off the table and re-racking themselves on the wall. Though innovative for the time, they are poorly animated, with obvious edits, and the animator's hand can actually be seen moving the balls along in one of the frames.

Reaction

Today, Pool Sharks is best remembered as Fields' first film effort. Film historian William K. Everson critiques the film as an "auspicious debut", with Fields' routines and pacing already finely honed. It was one of two short films Fields made for a company called Gaumont, distributed by Mutual. He and Ross made another short around the same time, His Lordship's Dilemma.

References

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