The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film

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.

This hilarious homemade short is a key moment in British comedy.

Two years before "A Hard Day's Night," Richard Lester (then a TV director) made this movie, starring Goons Peter Sellers & Spike Milligan with the wonderful Leo McKern (who would later play the zany cult leader in "Help").

Here, in 1962, you can see the seeds of the revolutionary style Lester applied to the Beatles, and that was hugely influential in the look of 60s films and media. It's clearly an ancestor of Monty Python, for one.

The movie features an oddball group of deadpans who look like they could come from a Beckett play. For no reason, they're outside in a landscape somewhere, where, for no reason, they play a series of silent-movie gags on each other.

Improvised and loose, it's a record of a bunch of guys (who happen to be comedy geniuses) fooling around with a camera, just like the video posters of today. Only much, much funnier.

Richard Lester is credited as co-director (with Sellers), co-writer, cinematographer, editor, and composer. It's the earliest piece of his work we're likely to see. (Try to catch his other early ones... "It's Trad, Dad," a feature that's half early 60s pop music and half crazy gags, is in rotation on TCM and is wonderful... "Mouse On The Moon," the one just before "A Hard Day's Night," is also enjoyable, but not so much in Lester's typical style.)

When "A Hard Day's Night" was released on DVD a few years ago, the advance information and even the packaging said that the disk would include "The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film." In sad fact it didn't. So for now, it's unavailable commercially. (Though as we know, in the cyber universe, everything is SOMEWHERE.)

Its just mad. I'm a big fan of Sellers. This just blows everything else out of the water. When it comes to craziness this beats anything. Well almost anything. It makes No sense! please note it is not actually on this DVD its on another DVD in the UK REGION 2 The Peter Sellers Story... As He Filmed It please note this DVD also contains a short film called 'I Say, I Say, I Say' as well as a documentary about Peter Sellers, this includes an interview never seen before as Sellers confiscated the film the day after it was shot at his home in Ireland, feeling that it was too revealing about himself. Interesting Stuff I'm Sure You'll Agree. Anyway go watch "The Running Jumping Standing Still Film" Watch it just to say you have. If You are a fan of Milligan/Sellers/Secombe You must watch If You are a fan of short films or a student watch it. Its just so odd!!

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!

This odd short was so beloved by The Beatles that they chose its director, Richard Lester, to direct their movie, A Hard Day's Night. Damned if I know why.

Basically this is a bunch of people running around in a field. While billed as a comedy, I was half-way through its 10-minute run before I laughed at anything. It wasn't just that there wasn't anything funny; there wasn't anything that indicated to me that it was supposed to be a comedy. It was more like an experimental avant-garde short.

Eventually there are a couple of funny gags, but those ten minutes crawled by. I don't know what the Beatles saw in it, but it escapes me.