Film

It's a Gift

Name: It's a Gift
Genre: Comedy
Released: 1934
Cast: W.C. Fields, Baby LeRoy, Kathleen Howard, Jean Rouverol, Julian Madison

Screwball comedy
Light-hearted

W.C. Fields' masterpiece of irritation: a man flees his suffocating life—a terrible job, a worse wife, squalling children—for a California orange grove that's almost certainly a con. It's 68 minutes of Fields being magnificently put-upon, deadpan through domestic chaos, finding dignity in defeat. A comedy built on real despair, beautifully performed.

TMDb rating

3.2

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you find pleasure in a grumbling, rule-bending man whose comic exasperation is built from small, loose, digressive episodes rather than a tight plot.

Skip it if you need your comedy quick and tidy, since this is a slow, meandering trip whose gags often wait for the audience to catch up.

What it asks of you: At just 68 minutes, it is brief, but its scenes wander at their own loose pace, so you must let its episodic detours unfold without hurrying them.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The Bank Dick1940

Fields as a bumbling security guard in another perfectly constructed vehicle for his style: the drunk's logic, the con man's patter, the everyday humiliation. Tighter than It's a Gift and just as funny.

But The plot barely exists—it's just Fields encountering obstacles and talking around them. If you need narrative propulsion, this will feel slack.

Ghostbusters II1989

Same DNA: a working stiff at the end of his rope dealing with circumstances that shouldn't exist but absolutely do. Bill Murray delivers Fields-level irritation and muttering. The script lets him find comedy in exhaustion.

But It's a loud '80s action comedy where Fields would have worked in whispers. Completely different register and energy.

Raising Arizona1987

The Coen Brothers understood Fields: a man with modest dreams destroyed by circumstance and his own incompetence, treated with both cruelty and affection. Nicolas Cage channels that same desperate, befuddled rage.

But Violent and chaotic rather than genteel. The comedy comes from extremity; Fields' comes from understatement.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from It's a Gift

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Modern Times1936

Both depict the fantasy of escape as the only dignity available to ordinary men destroyed by circumstance; both end with the dream intact but the outcome uncertain.

Chaplin as a man crushed by systems larger than himself, fleeing to California for a fresh start. The same dream as Bissonette's—escape to something better—treated with the same mixture of hope and futility. Released two years after It's a Gift and carrying the same heartbreak.

But Silent film, and the sentiment is genuine rather than comedic. If you come expecting laughs, the melancholy will seem slow.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?2000

Depression-era America, a man escaping bad circumstances (and a worse woman), con schemes and incompetence treated as tragicomedy. The Coens again; it's in their DNA now. Gorgeous and strange.

But Very stylized and Southern Gothic. It's about yearning for escape more than the actual escape, which some find slow.

The Ladykillers1955

Ealing's masterpiece: criminals posing as lodgers, undone by a sweet elderly landlady and their own stupidity. The pleasure of watching con artists get outsmarted by ordinariness, Fields' great subject.

But British comedy from 1955—if you don't adjust to the pacing and deadpan, it'll feel like nothing's happening.

Barton Fink1991

A man's carefully constructed world collapses into nightmare and confusion. John Turturro as a fumbling dreamer. Suffocating domestic horror dressed as comedy. The Coens' most Fields-adjacent film in mood.

But Increasingly dark and surreal. It stops being funny and starts being unpleasant; some people never recover.

A League of Their Own1992

Tom Hanks as a drunk manager who can't imagine wanting anything better, dealing with people who do. A man out of step with his circumstances. Comedy rooted in real disappointment and regret.

But It's ultimately optimistic and warm, which undermines the despair Fields found so funny. Also, very 1990s feel-good.

Withnail & I1987

Two failed actors falling through the world, unemployed and delusional, arguing in dingy London flats. The comedy of damaged people trapped in circumstances they can't escape or improve.

But British, theatrical, and bleak. If you want redemption or forward momentum, this deliberately refuses to give it to you.

PlayTime1967

Jacques Tati as Monsieur Hulot, a well-meaning man perpetually baffled by modern life. Wordless comedy about incompetence and alienation. The spiritual successor to Fields—deadpan and deeply humane.

But Nearly three hours of extremely subtle physical comedy with minimal plot. It requires patience and close attention to appreciate.

Umberto D.1952

Same protagonist—a man too old and too ordinary to matter—but where Fields finds absurdist humor in humiliation, De Sica finds only the humiliation itself.

An elderly pensioner trying to keep his apartment and his dignity while the world ignores him. De Sica's neorealist masterpiece removes the comedy but keeps Fields' core concern: a man at the mercy of forces indifferent to his survival. Quiet, devastating.

But Italian neorealism from 1952. No jokes, no sentiment, no redemption. It's a documentary of despair. Watching It's a Gift afterward feels like choosing comedy as a survival mechanism.

The Straight Story1999

Both center on an ordinary man undertaking a journey to escape or repair his life, but Lynch treats it as genuinely redemptive where Fields insists on futility—showing what happens if you believe the dream might work.

David Lynch directs a real story: an old man drives a lawnmower across Iowa to reconcile with his estranged brother. Earnest, gentle, obsessed with the simple dignity of going forward. Fields would recognize this man and his quiet desperation.

But A David Lynch film without any strangeness or darkness. Some will find it aggressively wholesome; it's essentially a Hallmark card about reconciliation.