"My Little Chickadee" (1940)

In every single movie Mae West was in she invariably played herself. The same was true for her My Little Chickadee co-star W.C. Fields. You could slap a character name onto them but no one was actually buying it. You went to see a Mae West film or a W.C. Fields film for their personalities. In hindsight, West and Fields were oddly well-suited. Each was liked for the delivery of their lines and the connotation of what they were saying. Their best dialogue functioned on double meanings and suggestion. West, with her swaggering, bawdy sex appeal, crooned out naughty lines about her extensive off-screen sexual conquests. Fields was a drunken buffoon as much off-screen as he was on, and his lines read like they were coming from someone trying convince you he was brilliant and put-together, when in reality nobody was really convinced. Fields spoke his lines in soft, muttering tones, trailing off into incomprehensibility. My Little Chickadee isn’t an especially good film, but it features these two distinctive performers and that redeems it. The film is a simple, almost redundant, western, with West as a woman whose purity is thrown into question when she has amorous relations with a masked bandit. She pretends to get married to the drunken conman Fields to set to rest any doubts about her maidenhood. Around this plot, the film allows for opportunities for West and Fields to play up their established personas. Much of the film separates them and switches back and forth between vignettes where they get in a few pithy pieces of dialogue. Besides the film’s ragged charm and humor, there is its sexual politics. Society questions West’s behavior but the film never does. West takes pride in her sexuality, and she simply shrugs off expectations and flirts with every guy around her. My Little Chickadee is often more advanced in its gender politics than many modern films: West remains single at film’s end and looks forward to more sexual adventures in her future. But really, who could contain Mae West?

Grade: B