The Barber Shop

With the great W.C. Fields in fine form, and a setup that provides him with a lot of good material, "The Barber Shop" is a very enjoyable short comedy. It is filled with the kinds of details and subtle gags that make Fields's comedies worth watching attentively.

"The Barber Shop" closely resembles the Fields feature "The Pharmacist", with very similar settings and stories. Both are very good, and in both of them Elise Cavanna is funny as the domineering wife of Fields's character. Both have some gags that are deliberately absurd, and others that are less obvious. Both feature amusing exchanges between Fields and numerous customers.

When Fields was at his best, he could really get across the wackiness of so much of what happens in daily life, and that's one of the things that works quite well here.

W.C. plays the title role of the Barber. He gets to flirt with the manicurist in his shop all day, and go upstairs to his unadoring wife at night. His shaving technique is truly frightening, and his steamroom is truly amazing. He even manages to babysit for a neighbor and to capture a criminal in his shop, through no fault of his own, during his very full day. And you haven't lived till you've heard Fields play the bass fiddle!

Fields is good as usual in this film; it's not as hilarious as others of his but is fairly even.

W. C. Fields had done a few silent shorts in the "teens" but it really did take sound to capture him at his best. He is not only a physical comedian, capable of broad slapstick, he is one of the best verbal comedians around, especially when allowed to ad-lib, as he does here. The story follows the adventures of barber Cornelius O'Hare through his extremely busy day. It has the look of a vaudeville routine, which no doubt it was based on. Fields' almost constant patter makes all his movies worth rewatching, just to catch his subtle remarks, often made under his breath and very quickly. I have read that, at the beginning of the short, as Fields is sitting out front of his shop, making rude comnents about people as they go by, that this is a tribute to his mother, who acted just like this as Fields was a boy, commenting cuttingly on the neighbors. If you like sardonic humor, Fields is the man for you. Recommended highly along with any of his other shorts as in these shorter films, much more is packed in and nothing is allowed to lag.

This is one of the oddest films I've seen of W. C. Fields because he seems to genuinely like his son! The young boy loves to tell really lame riddles and W. C. encourages him and acts pretty tenderly towards the kid (at least compared to the usual fare from this comedian). Children are either just tolerated or hated in his films. A good example was his famous line "Of course I love kids,....boiled". For whatever reason, this film is unusual in this respect.

Now as for the film itself, this one is very similar to THE PHARMACIST in that it is a very slow slice of life short, though it does have more gags and a more "Fields-like" ending. Don't expect the craziness of Fields shorts like THE DENTIST or THE FATAL GLASS OF BEER, but this isn't a positive or negative thing--I like both styles of his work. Funny, well-paced and cute--this is an excellent Fields short.

Personally, I like Fields' features much more than the few short films he made. The Bank Dick, You Can't Cheat an Honest Man, You're Telling Me, The Old-Fashioned Way, It's a Gift, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, and The Man on the Flying Trapeze are some of the funniest films you're ever likely to see. But most of his shorts are somewhat lame. My favorite is The Golf Specialist, which is nothing more - nor should it be - than Fields' infamous vaudeville routine. The Dentist is famous for its sexual innuendo of the woman wrapping her legs around Fields while he pulls a tooth, but it's not very funny after that. The Barber Shop is the second funniest of these shorts. Fields is very funny in it, and so are the supporting cast members. Here Fields is in henpecked husband mode, taking it from his evil vegetarian wife. His little son likes to tell him the lamest riddles in history. The slight plot is a prelude to The Bank Dick, with a criminal on the run and Fields bragging that he'd throttle him good if he got a hold of him. A lot of good jokes here. See it on the Criterion disc of his short films. 8/10.