A Night at the Movies

Another fun Benchley short about he and his wife going to see a movie and the various foibles they go through before and during.

As an aside, I can't imagine having a kid staring at me like that. I can laugh at it in this context, but if it really happened to me, I'd change seats way faster than he did!

A Night at the Movies is an amusing Robert Benchley short about him and his wife having trouble knowing which way to go for their movie, getting confused about whether the tickets were for the feature or a car that's being offered in the building, having to switch seats because of a kid that keeps staring and a man ahead of them blocking the view, and a few other things that I won't reveal here. Mr. Benchley looks constantly bemused throughout and it's pretty fun seeing him flustered at every turn. This Oscar-nominated one-reel short is available on the DVD of the Marx Brothers' A Day at the Races. Worth a look for any fan of vintage short comedy.

This short comedy was recently selected for inclusion as a special feature in the new DVD release of the Marx Brothers' A Day at the Races. Based on the evidence at hand, viewers unfamiliar with Robert Benchley may find it hard to believe that the guy was a first class wit on par with Groucho himself, in his own understated way, but you'll just have to take my word for it. Better still, take a look at some of the comic articles he wrote for magazines and newspapers, most of which have been collected in book form. Benchley's nonsense pieces and essays on the frustrations of day-to-day life are still funny, and often hilarious.

Benchley's short films are generally pleasant, but only occasionally rise to the level of his written output. Many of them focus on the foibles of bourgeois domestic life, and come off rather like the later TV sitcoms of the '50s. However, the filmed versions of Benchley's double-talk lectures sometimes scale the heights of inspired insanity he regularly reached in his magazine pieces, and one very early talkie from 1928, The Sex Life of the Polyp, is one of my favorite Benchley shorts, a perfect little gem of comic absurdity.

As for the item at hand, A Night at the Movies is a pleasant but unremarkable effort devoted to the petty irritations encountered by Mr. and Mrs. Average during an evening at the local Bijou. There is confusion with the tickets, difficulty finding seats, a tall fat man who sits directly in front and blocks the screen, someone with a persistent cough, and a moment of strangeness involving a small boy with an eerie stare. (Today, of course, a major problem would be pagers and cell-phones going off during the show.) For modern viewers this short may be more valuable as social history than as comedy, seeing as how it was made in an era when men in public places had to find a place to stow their hats, and dancers performed at movie theaters between the features. On that level this film is an interesting time capsule.

This modest comedy short may not look like much alongside the Marx Brothers, but don't dismiss Robert Benchley. You'll just need to look elsewhere for his funniest and freshest work.

AS VALUABLE TODAY as both a fine example of what the old short subjects were to the movies in Hollywood's Golden Age, as well as a sort of historical piece who's unintentional chronicling of the movie house of that era, A NIGHT AT THE MOVIES is an all around gem of a mini-movie. One can learn more about life in that period between World Wars from it than many a history book on domestic life in the USA.

THE PRODUCTION TEAM takes great care in putting everyone's favourite everyman, Robert Benchley, at the center of what seems like a very simple, uncomplicated premise; being that of going to the local movie palace to see a highly rated, new release. It is a first run picture and would be playing at the big theatre, downtown; rather than at the local show in the neighborhoods.

THIS WAS LONG before anyone had thought of a Shopping Centre Multi-Plex, or even a Shopping Mall, for that matter. It was a time when moviegoers expected and received a sort of "royal" type of treatment and received same. The importance and seriousness of the occasion is emphasized by the manner of dress one sees in the many patrons who fill the theatre. One's "Sunday Best" was the order of the day when attending any public performances; be they a baseball game, football, boxing, wrestling, a concert in the park or the movies.

THE FACT THAT everything seems to happen to poor Bob Benchley is at the center of this one. No matter what the situation from buying the tickets for he and his spouse, being seated or what have you, they all revolve around Benchley's very urbane appearance and very refined and dignified manners. It is a case of the most refined of the Homo Sapiens being in competition with a bunch of Paleolithic Neanderthals.

THE FACT THAT Mr. Benchley was not primarily an actor, but rather a gifted writer who was coaxed to step before the cameras and deliver his own words, seems to have added to his on screen personality and appeal to his audience. While certainly no virtuoso of an accomplished thespian, his sort of amateurish characterization of this very genteel individual's coping with the trials and tribulations of modern life were well served in this series of shorts.

THIS BASIC PREMISE had been done before. In the 1929 silent two reeler, MOVIE NIGHT, it is Charley Chase who is put through the running of the gauntlet of multiple mishaps at the cinema. This was a Hal Roach Production, written by Chase & Leo McCarey and directed by Lewis R. Foster.

Robert Benchley and wife Betty Rose Clarke decide to go to the movies, and that's where their troubles begin in this typically amusing Benchley short.

His vehicles were moving from the ones in which he lectured vaguely on subjects which left the viewer knowing less than when he started, to ones in which he performed as the befuddled man ever in quest of a decent good time and doomed to failure. Although the sight of a movie house packed with thousands of attendees, and a disdainful staff to supervise their comings and going may confuse the modern viewer, still we can feel his consternation at trying to find a movie that neither he nor his wife have seen before. After all, although we may no longer go to the movies several times a week, we do have to deal with cable or TV service with thousands of channels and offerings.... and nothing on.