Review of Pool Sharks

This movie debut from W.C. Fields is a fairly nondescript affair that presents only fleeting glimpses of the comedy legend Fields would become on the screen. The 35-year-old comedian is far from the finished article here. The booze hadn't yet gone to work on those unmistakable features, but he already looked older than his years. He sports a bushy moustache in this one, that would be pruned back over the years before disappearing completely, and relies too heavily on some fairly unpleasant comic violence for laughs that don't often materialise. In one scene he holds open his love rival's eye between finger and thumb so that he can poke it precisely with an extended forefinger – a coldly savage moment designed to appeal to the baser instincts of the film's target audience.

Although he's barely recognisable as the character with whom we would become familiar, Fields already displays his trademark animosity towards small children when he tips over the chair of a small boy, efficiently dispatching the child so that he can sit beside the woman whose affections he seeks. When he and his rival aren't antagonising each other, we are entertained by stop-motion photography of pool balls travelling around a table before returning to their original position, entering the pockets via impossible angles or flying onto a shelf on the wall. It probably knocked them out in 1915, but it's all familiar stuff now.

Of interest to curiosity seekers only…