The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film

I remember seeing this some years ago Spike Milligan had just bought a movie camera, and so they (The Goons) decided to make a film If you like off-beat humour, try and rent this movie

There is no plot as such. This is a slapstick comedy. It shows a lots of gags.

By itself, this film is nothing special. A weird experiment with some gags, it somehow got nominated for "best short film". What really makes it noteworthy is that the film contains Peter Sellers, who went on to be one of the greatest comedians of all time.

Also, this film leads to "A Hard Day's Night", which changed the way the world looked at music on film. Apparently the Beatles loved this short film and just had to have director Richard Lester work with them. Who knew?

My main trouble with this film was that most of the gags sound a lot funnier in principle (and, presumably, in the minds of their creators) than they seem to come out in practice: it's only eleven minutes long, but I found my attention-span seriously flagging well before the end.

It is essentially a silent film, featuring a very basic soundtrack and some sound effects; in fact in its style it reminds me of the very early silent comedies (circa 1900) which basically consisted of random slapstick scenes cut together. I saw this in company with Cecil Hepworth's "Saturday Shopping" (1903), and in fact in some ways it's not dissimilar. On the whole it's what you might expect from a film that consisted of fooling about for a couple of Sundays in a field that cost the grand sum of five pounds to hire...

It's a pity, because a lot of the gags, if described, sound very ingenious (man uses woman as camera to photograph husband; clay-pigeon-shooter shoots down discus and engages in duel with the enraged discus-hurler). But somehow the execution seems so random and amateurish that I really didn't find it very funny: and in the absence of laughter, nonsense becomes extremely tedious.

This British comedy one-reeler, an Academy Award nominee, is renowned for being director Lester's debut and as one of the few films to showcase "The Goons" (represented here by Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan). A collection of silent and somewhat surreal skits, it obviously owes a lot to the likes of Chaplin, Keaton and Tati - yet, its irreverence also looks forward to the whole "Swinging Sixties" trend and the Monty Python brand of fooling that would be established a decade on. In that respect, it is something of a milestone as well, even if on the surface it appears both silly and amateurish!

In fact, the most inventive bit has Sellers wearing goggles and flippers while toting a hunting rifle which he intends catching fish with and the most amusing being Milligan acting as a human gramophone! By the way, Lester himself (recognizable, if anything, by his bald head) appears as an eccentric artist who labels his female model's face according to the colour of paint he will be utilizing on his canvas!; also on hand is Leo McKern - with whom the film opens and ends, for no very good reason....but such is the 'anything goes' attitude on display here!

The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (1959) is a 11 min short by Richard Lester. Supposedly one of his first films, The Running Jumping is basically one sight gag after another, cleverly crafted yet somewhat rudimentary; obviously it was produced as an experiment. Lester's use of droll antics and irony predated what would manifest itself in A Hard Day's Night, although Lester had already developed a certain style in preceding films. Nevertheless, what ignited Lester's career was soon to come, however, as funny as it seems, The Running Jumping billed an actor who would garner more stardom than Lester himself: Peter Sellers. Peter Sellers is featured as a sly Nimrod who prances around a field and soon engages in a duel with a muscleman. This is a far cry from a serious role as Chance the Gardener, however Sellers still is riot and it is appropriate considering that The Running Jumping was made at the height of a postmodern British Slapstick movement. Other hilarities in the film include a frustrated photographer at his wits' end, a family of buffoons dragging an English kite, and the absurd yet cliched boxer signaling a fool into his direction. Although a fun trip, The Running Jumping is not a good introduction to Lester's oeuvre. If you can try to find that rare copy of Hard Day's Night with Running Jumping tagged on at the end: that's how I saw it. Then give How I Won The War, Help, and The Forum a chance.