"You Tube" offers an eight minute version of this film, which I watched tonight. POOL SHARKS is Field's first film role, and we see the man as a womanizer and a drinker. During a picnic, Fields sees his girlfriend, and tries to romance her - but so does his shorter, showier rival (who is wearing louder clothing). They both manage to destroy the girl's hammock (Fields gets eggs on the seat of his pants - not quite as funny as the sticky paper he got on his hands in THE GOLF SPECIALIST sixteen years later; his rival gets a needle in his pants). Both also put food from the picnic table onto the girl's plate, filling it up so that it is thoroughly inedible. Finally a boy shoots a spitball into Fields' eye causing him to poor coffee onto the girl's dress. While her friends comfort her and get her changed, the men at the party decide to have Fields and his rival play a pool game to settle the issue of who will get the girl.
The bulk of the film follows how Fields and his rival both play pool so well as to make it unlikely that either will win. This was the age of Mack Sennett, so that the pool balls are shown hitting the table and "stop - action" is used to make the balls split crazily, going into the pockets, but then reappearing and returning to their triangular initial position. Since the balls move so jerkily to us, the "special effects" are too prehistoric in practice to be good to us, and the joke (which probably was effective in 1915 to audiences then) is not good now. One wishes the film had an early master of such trickery like George Melies, but that is too much to wish for.
Finally the two rivals start using their pool cues as weapons on each other - with Fields seemingly the winner (he causes a pool ball to send his rival into a barrel of water outside the pool hall window). But another of the balls hits a fish bowl, spilling the contents on the girl. She comes in and starts belaboring Fields, but while the other men try to calm her down, Fields goes into the basement via a trap door. He finds booze downstairs, but hearing the people above trying to follow him, he leaves through the hurricane doors and walks away. That is how the film clip I saw ends.
Curious seeing him so young (born in 1879, Fields was all of 36 in this movie). He sports a disgusting looking mustache (almost like overgrown nose hair), and a "Cuthbert J. Twilly" top hat. He is adept at using his cane to hit his rival (like Charlie Chaplin, but not as poetic as Chaplin poking his rival Eric Campbell in the contemporary Mutual comedies). But his juggling abilities are not shown to great advantage except in one brief sequence when he is trying to re-stack some pool balls on a wall rack but they keep seeming to jump back out of their positions. Still one wishes more of that were in the film.
For an early look at the young Fields it is worth watching. To see the full blown comedian we came to love we would have to wait at least a decade - maybe fifteen years - to finally see him in fine form.
The bulk of the film follows how Fields and his rival both play pool so well as to make it unlikely that either will win. This was the age of Mack Sennett, so that the pool balls are shown hitting the table and "stop - action" is used to make the balls split crazily, going into the pockets, but then reappearing and returning to their triangular initial position. Since the balls move so jerkily to us, the "special effects" are too prehistoric in practice to be good to us, and the joke (which probably was effective in 1915 to audiences then) is not good now. One wishes the film had an early master of such trickery like George Melies, but that is too much to wish for.
Finally the two rivals start using their pool cues as weapons on each other - with Fields seemingly the winner (he causes a pool ball to send his rival into a barrel of water outside the pool hall window). But another of the balls hits a fish bowl, spilling the contents on the girl. She comes in and starts belaboring Fields, but while the other men try to calm her down, Fields goes into the basement via a trap door. He finds booze downstairs, but hearing the people above trying to follow him, he leaves through the hurricane doors and walks away. That is how the film clip I saw ends.
Curious seeing him so young (born in 1879, Fields was all of 36 in this movie). He sports a disgusting looking mustache (almost like overgrown nose hair), and a "Cuthbert J. Twilly" top hat. He is adept at using his cane to hit his rival (like Charlie Chaplin, but not as poetic as Chaplin poking his rival Eric Campbell in the contemporary Mutual comedies). But his juggling abilities are not shown to great advantage except in one brief sequence when he is trying to re-stack some pool balls on a wall rack but they keep seeming to jump back out of their positions. Still one wishes more of that were in the film.
For an early look at the young Fields it is worth watching. To see the full blown comedian we came to love we would have to wait at least a decade - maybe fifteen years - to finally see him in fine form.