A Night at the Movies

Finally agreeing on which film to see, Robert Benchley and his (uncredited) wife Betty Ross Clarke set off in time to watch the feature. There is a free lottery to win a shiny new car in the foyer and that's where the tickets are accidentally placed, so ensuring the rest of their visit gets off on a typically unfortunate foot! It pans out with the usual cinema nuisances and as Benchley gets more irritated by his experience, he leaves the auditorium and struggles to find his way back into what appears to be the world's s largest circular cinema. It's an amiable critique of going to the movies, and for those of us who regularly attend them there are certainly some truths that ring true around selfishness and lack of self-awareness, but I think this rather over-contrives the scenarios and his bumbling can go wrong, will go wrong character actually began to annoy me quite quickly.

Night at the Movies, A (1937)

*** (out of 4)

Oscar-nominated Robert Benchley short has a couple (Benchley, Betty Ross Clarke) going to the movie where all sorts of trouble starts. Benchley has to put up with losing his tickets, sitting behind a tale man and then getting lost while trying to find an exit. This comedy doesn't feature too many laughs but it's still highly entertaining just because it's fun seeing someone else go through various trouble that could happen at a movie theater. Benchley's style of comedy does aim for laugh-out-loud moments but instead just mild smiles seeing stuff that I'm sure we've all gone through and it's rather funny how this film, now seventy-two-years old, is still relevant today. I've seen quite a few of Benchley's shorts but I've read that none of them could compare to his comic writing but as of this date I've yet to read anything from him.

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!

An MGM ROBERT BENCHLEY Short Subject.

Trying to quietly spend A NIGHT AT THE MOVIES isn't so simple for hapless Robert Benchley.

Nominated for the Best One-Reel Short Subject Academy Award, this was one of a series of little films to feature the gentle humor of Robert Benchley (1889-1945). Watching him deal with the unexpected difficulties of simply enjoying a movie elicits much quiet amusement.

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Often overlooked or neglected today, the one and two-reel short subjects were useful to the Studios as important training grounds for new or burgeoning talents, both in front & behind the camera. The dynamics for creating a successful short subject was completely different from that of a feature length film, something akin to writing a topnotch short story rather than a novel. Economical to produce in terms of both budget & schedule and capable of portraying a wide range of material, short subjects were the perfect complement to the Studios' feature films.

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.