by Tony d’Ambra
The pre-coder The Dentist is about as close as Hollywood ever got to Dada. W. C. Fields wrote and starred in this late Mack Sennett talkie about a dentist who would rather be creating havoc on the golf-course than torturing his hapless patients. Running at just over 20 minutes you get good value with a lot more than a laugh a minute.
No ifs and buts, Fields was a misanthrope and a misogynist. Cruel, base, and egotistical, he lays brutal sway over all and sundry, family or stranger, friend or foe.
Liker most dentists of the period, his surgery is part of his home. We find him at breakfast being served by his adult daughter. No wife in sight. We get standard gags about his lost glasses being on his head and the morning paper hidden under his arse. Fields’ side-winder voice delivery hooking you every time.
Wandering into the kitchen to show his daughter an article in the newspaper, Fields gets her attention by patting her back-side while she is bending over looking into the ice-box, and discovers she is in love with the ice-man – she thinks the pats are from the beau. He doesn’t approve and a running gag will be his attempts to lock her away. More strange and disquieting of course are the forbidden yet overt sexual undertones. TV censors seem to have missed this when they cut a later less unsettling albeit more obvious sexual sequence involving an unorthodox extraction procedure that is more about penetration.
Fields wants to get in a round of golf before his first appointment. On the golf-course he of course is hopeless, makes crazy interpretations of the rules, and in a fit of piqué throws his caddy after his golf-bag into a lake, after having knocked out another golfer from a shot hit with deliberate negligence, and then complaining when the victim’s knocked-out dentures get in the way of a put!
Back in the surgery, we witness a cavalcade of patient abuse and withering one-liners. A dizzy wailing broad with a toothache displays her legs and ample behind – more than once – as she bends over to show Fields where a dog bit her on the leg. The dentist’s drill – sounding more like pneumatic road equipment – is deployed with careless abandon. Teeth are spat out and ducks released from a capacious beard – the owner’s mouth found only after the use of a stethoscope. An extraction from a female patient with rather long legs becomes an extended ‘dry-hump’ as the pliers do their difficult work, with one of her high heels ending up stuck in one of Fields’ trouser pockets.
Penetration, pain, sadomasochism, biting, stomping, sex, contempt, incompetence, demolition, more sex, and farcical characterisations. Bunuel and Dali eat your hearts out!
How The Dentist made the Top 100:
Peter M: No. 10
Frank Gallo: No. 17
Sam Juliano: No. 32
Frank Aida: No. 48
Tony d’Ambra: No. 51
John Greco: No. 58
Jason Marshall: No. 60
Penetration, pain, sadomasochism, biting, stomping, sex, contempt, incompetence, demolition, more sex, and farcical characterisations. Bunuel and Dali eat your hearts out!
hahahaha Tony!!! Brilliantly framed! But the entire economical piece perfectly sizes up this classic, one of the greatest shorts by an comic, and one that for many is more acute than Fields’ features. To be sure, as you note he is perhaps the most celebrated of all the screen misanthropes and as a misogynist as you note he has no equal. Again his personal characteristics and alpha like control over everyone he encounters is all part of his iconic screen persona. Pound for pound, THE DENTIST is a laugh riot that at least equals Fields’ other brilliant short, A FATAL GLASS OF BEER, and one where anarchy reigns supreme!
I graciously offer up this great comedy short for those who may not have seen it, to compliment Tony’s fantastic review:
Brilliant stuff Tony. I had not seen this until tonight! Of course I have seen the feature length films but not WC’s shorts. This one is a riot and rightly deserves to be on this list and even higher. I was totally in stitches. Yes and was shocked that even in the pre-code era that the “sex-extraction” scene got into the final cut. Unbelievably funny. I do love WC fields. My Uncle has always loved WC Fields and introduced his films to me when I was a kid. I didn’t get most of the jokes back then but I still thought he was funny. I still love It’s A Gift and The Bank Dick, but this one is right up there.
Reading this was as funny as watching the short! I am grateful to be posted among those supporting this laugh riot. Tony knows well how to bring out the delicious irreverence.
Frank, it was in fact was of the few shorts from am\nyone to make the Top 100, which is telling in and of itself!
Hysterical stuff and a fantastic write up Tony. The ‘dry-hump’ scene is probably one of the most daring even for pre-code.
> Sam, Jon, Frank, and John. Thanks guys!
Another Fields that gets damn close to dada is International House–one of the stranger films of its time, and often hilarious.
Peter, I agree that INTERNATIONAL HOUSE deserves far more respect.
Not even the pre-code excesses endear me to this one. Sorry, but in book there are funnier Fields vehicles than this one.
Pierre–
I know a number of serious Fields adherents prefer his A FATAL GLASS OF BEER.
Nice, quick review here of a film I like a great deal. I didn’t include it as I already had two WC Fields pictures in my top 60, but if the list was extended to a top 100, this probably sees inclusion.
It is, like most WC Fields stuff, gloriously anarchic and riotously funny. Most have already noted this, but something I think that is often overlooked is the amount of general buffoonery Fields puts in his character too. I mean as Tony laments, yes WC Fields is misogynist and misanthropic (the most overused word in art criticism I’ve always said), but it’s also put across by a man who can barely function without others aiding and assisting his day to day workings (I mean look here it’s his wife that helps him find his glasses, newspaper, and golf clubs). That and often (like in his glorious The Bank Dick) the women (and children) in his life are giving it back quite well thank you very much.
“This kids so dumb he doesn’t even know what time it is!”
“By the way what time is it?”
“I don’t know”
That sums it up, nastiness without an ounce of substance to it. Again, nice piece on a very funny film. Vivà WC Fields!
I know Allan is a big fan as well, naming the film is his extended Top 100 list.
hahaha! In THE BANK DICK the women do trash him mercilessly!
I just watched this short film thanks to the link posted up by Sam in the comments. I must say that while I found that the overall plot structure (a.k.a. the “arc” about the dentist’s daughter’s love interest resolution was a very low note comedy wise to end up this short film) was very weak, I found myself chuckling along with the better parts of the film, specially the sexual tones found with the female patients and the overall wackyness found in certain spots like in the golf course or the stomping of the daughter leading up to the falling of some of the ceiling inside the patient’s mouth. This short film is about irresponsability and forgetfulness and for the era it must’ve been a laugh riot. For me, it had me laughing a couple of times, I guess I’m not made for this talkies comedy shorts. ***1/2
Anyway, great piece Tony, framing the strenghts and the brevity of the film itself in a stupendous manner.
the sexual stuff with the patients are indeed what make most roll over Jaimie!
Thanks Jamie and Jaime.
Jamie has identified a very important element of Field’s ‘character’: the helplessness. Something I have not really thought about and should have when framing this review. Indeed, this I now appreciate endears him to the empathetic viewer – you can’t dislike the guy. He is as Jamie again points out “anarchic”. He subverts the usual empty niceties that often mask social interactions and in so doing – even if there is a cruel satirisation – we are laughing at ourselves.
I fully appreciate that Fields does not have wide appeal and that political correctness demands a certain disdain for his brand of humour. To those people I say go fly a kite instead
While I think about it I would make a connection between The Dentist and Vigo’s truly anarchic Zero de Conduite made in the following year, between Vigo’s bearded man-child principal and Fields’ bearded patient. Both short in stature and both absurd. Both pilloried cruelly but not for their shortness but because of their ridiculous pomposity. As for Dada, I can’t think of any more surreal scene from Hollywood than ducks flying out of the patient’s beard and then being shot at by Fields. Though the drunken rail car shooting scene in Sturges’ in Palm Beach story comes close. All by way of saying keep watching this space folks, this here Countdown has a longs way to go, y’all. Apologies to Pa Kettle.
Go fly a kite indeed!
Tony, if I may say so I agree with the connections you pose between ZERO and THE DENTIST!
The screen cap alone is pretty funny!
I saw a lot of W. C. Fields’ films as a kid, but I can’t recall ever sieeing THE DENTIST. It sounds hysterical, I’m planning to seek it out and watch it soon.