The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film
| The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film | |
|---|---|
 Title card | |
| Directed by | Dick Lester Peter Sellers |
| Screenplay by | Spike Milligan Peter Sellers Mario Fabrizi Dick Lester |
| Story by | Peter Sellers |
| Produced by | Peter Sellers |
| Starring | Peter Sellers Spike Milligan |
| Cinematography | Dick Lester |
| Edited by | Dick Lester Peter Sellers |
| Music by | Dick Lester |
Production company | Peter Sellers Productions |
| Distributed by | British Lion Films |
Release date |
|
Running time | 11 minutes[1] |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | £70 |
The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film is a 1959 British experimental sketch comedy short film directed by Richard Lester and Peter Sellers, in collaboration with Bruce Lacey.[2]
It was filmed over two Sundays in 1959, at a cost of around £70 (equivalent to £2,057 in 2023) (including £5 for the rental of a field).[3]
It was a favourite of The Beatles, especially John Lennon, which led to Lester being hired to direct A Hard Day's Night (1964), Help! (1965), and When I Won The War, which starred Lennon. In Help!, Lacey makes a guest appearance as George Harrison's gardener in the sequence where the group arrive at their "home".[4]
Synopsis
[edit]The short consists of a series of surreal vignettes which transpire in the English countryside and involve a rotating array of protagonists. It begins with a man watching through a telescope how an old woman cleans a meadow with a rag and bucket. Other examples are a photographer who tries to develop a film in the water of a lake after wrapping a black piece of cloth around his head, or an athlete who is performing push-ups and is then used as the seat for the model of a portrait painter. The model has numbers on her face which the painter uses to choose the correct colours from his numbered palette. The same athlete later throws a hammer, which is then shot down like a skeet shooting target by a hunter. The film ends with a man wearing a top hat and a single boxing glove knocking out another man he had been luring for a long time. The man then enters a hut, undresses, puts the boxing glove back on and goes to sleep, turning off the light and ending the movie.
Cast
[edit]- Richard Lester
- Peter Sellers
- Spike Milligan
- Mario Fabrizi
- Bruce Lacey
- David Lodge
- Leo McKern
- Norman Rossington
- Graham Stark
Critical reception
[edit]BFI Screenonline concluded that the film's lasting legacy "was its influence (as part of Milligan's overall body of work) on British comedy in general, and on Monty Python's Flying Circus (BBC, 1969–74) in particular. This is evident not only in its surreal humour, but in the way that elements of one routine are threaded through subsequent scenes, transcending the stand-alone sketch form—a tactic subsequently favoured by the Python team."[5]
Empire magazine called it "Sublime slapstick surrealism."[6]
Releases
[edit]The film has been made available as a special feature on several home video releases of A Hard Day's Night. It is also featured in The Unknown Peter Sellers (TV documentary, 2000) and a British Film Institute released collection of rarely seen films from Bruce Lacey's career entitled The Lacey Rituals. It is also included as a special feature of the StudioCanal issue of I'm All Right Jack (1959).
Accolades
[edit]It was nominated for the 1959 Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Subject, but lost to the Jacques Cousteau film The Golden Fish (1959).[7][8]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ "THE RUNNING JUMPING & STANDING STILL FILM - British Board of Film Classification". www.bbfc.co.uk.
- ^ "The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (1959) - Richard Lester, Peter Sellers - Cast and Crew - AllMovie". AllMovie.
- ^ "Running Jumping & Standing Still..." A Short History of The Telegoons... The Goon Show Preservation Society. Retrieved 2 July 2008.
- ^ James, David E. (10 December 2015). Rock 'N' Film: Cinema's Dance With Popular Music. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199387625 – via Google Books.
- ^ "BFI Screenonline: Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film, The (1960)". www.screenonline.org.uk.
- ^ Parkinson, David. "The Running, Jumping And Standing Still Film". Empire.
- ^ "1959 Short Subject (Live Action)". Academy Awards database. Retrieved 1 March 2024.
- ^ Philo, Simon (6 November 2014). British Invasion: The Crosscurrents of Musical Influence. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9780810886278 – via Google Books.
External links
[edit]- The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film at IMDb
- The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film at the BFI's Screenonline
- The short film The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film is available for free viewing and download at the Internet Archive.