Post by Doghouse6 on Jun 19, 2017 23:05:09 GMT
But maybe my definition is too limited. To be sure, Fields and the wacky characters he meets are screwballs! (And there's a surrealism inherent in Preston Sturges and Hawks's Bringing up Baby and Twentieth Century--probably not in His Girl Friday, though.)
If spiderwort will forgive some tangential observations, yours about Fields invoke parallels to The Marx Brothers. Although all of their films contain examples, none serves to illustrate surrealist humor any better than Duck Soup: bursting into a full-fledged, celebratory yet irreverent musical production number upon a declaration of war; the extended interlude with Harpo in Paul Revere mode, concluding with him in bed with his horse (almost a film within the film); the battle sequences themselves. They all impart a throw-caution-to-the-wind, "Why the hell not" sense of abandon. I'd submit, though, that Fields's sense of the surreal was of a more intimate and personal nature. While there were more outlandish examples (in The Bank Dick or Never Give A Sucker An Even Break, for instance), the "Carl LaFong" sequence of It's A Gift typifies this sense: it comes out of nowhere and relates to nothing (other than as one of a series of perfectly-timed interruptions of Fields's sleep), and consists only of two people talking.
And on that personal level, I find additional parallels between Fields and Groucho in particular. It might be said that Groucho's was the humor of disrespect: no one and nothing (not even the pictures themselves) was safe from his deflating barbs. Closely akin was what I'd call Fields's humor of contempt. But while Groucho never let anyone get the better of him (except, occasionally, one of his own brothers), Fields was frequently the butt of those constructions: the put-upon guy who merely wanted to do his own thing unimpeded, but who found himself treated with as much contempt by those who'd interfere with which he often treated them (if only in muttered asides to himself). Groucho would make anyone his victim just for the fun of it, but Fields seemed forever in a quiet little war with the uncontrollable nature of life itself (and like Rodney Dangerfield, got no respect).
Beyond these was another occasional but regular commonality: the fast-talking hustler (evident in The Cocoanuts, Monkey Business, The Old Fashioned Way, Poppy, A Day At the Races and You Can't Cheat An Honest Man among others). Other comics would successfully integrate this element into their onscreen identities as well: Bud Abbott (yes: although the official straight man, I consider Bud a highly skilled comic), Bob Hope (along with Crosby in their teamings) and Phil Silvers among the most notable.
What does any of this have to do with screwball comedies? Hey, I said it was tangential.