Thanksgiving Day

A pair of doctors who have just set up in town commiserate with the mortician downstairs over the lack of customers for any of their services.

There's nothing in the least cinematic about this short subject, since director Bryan Foy sets his camera down in the center of the audience's front row and only occasionally cuts to a different shot. While silent features were experimenting with wildly camera movement, talkie shorts had talking to keep the audience interested, and Foy knew it. He expanded a talking three-reel short to the first all-talking feature. Even with people spouting bad dialogue to microphones hidden in bowls of flowers, LIGHTS OF NEW YORK grossed a million dollars on a $23,000 budget, and for the next four decades, Foy was a leading producer of movies.

Although the performances are a bit stiff, I really enjoyed the cynical black humor in this short.