Chafed Elbows

Along with a few adventurous souls from Stuyvesant H.S. I went to see this at the Bleecker Street Cinema so I was very young. It was the first underground film I had ever seen and it was playing with Anger's 'Scorpio Rising'. In the late 60's these films were so ahead of their time that it was like being transported out of the world of the go go 60's into the Bizarro alternate universe. I don't even have more than a hazy memory of 'Chafed Elbows' except I think the mother character was crawling under the table at some kind of wedding to get at someone and that it was all in stop action - something else that was unheard of at the time. But again, to see it back then was like being initiated into some kind of cult of either hidden truth or bizarro Satanism. But both of those films have never left me. In fact, I was surprised when I came across this site and that it could actually be seen again. Way back then, going to the Bleecker Street Cinema, the mecca for European film like Fellini's work (the first time I saw '8 1/2' I couldn't quite figure out what I had just seen - it was like a phantasmagoria of a dream - but I knew I wanted to see it again) was like attending a congregation of some arcane underground religion - and there weren't that many true believers. Stephan Morrow, Artistic Director, The Great American Play Series

"I'm just like an art film. I never fade, and I got a lot of special effects."

An experimental film that tells you in five minutes more about the counterculture in the 1960's than an entire Hollywood production written by someone more conventional. It's not always pretty (that gag about the amusement park attractions comes to mind), but it was endlessly interesting because it was so offbeat. The frequent use of stills worked for me too. There are lots of zingers here amidst unfiltered satire, and the whole thing plays like jazz, one riff coming after another. Great stuff from Robert Downey Sr.

George Morgan has affairs with several women, including his mother, all played by Elsie Downey, while he goes through his annual mental breakdown.

I have a big problem writing about Robert Downey Sr.'s mixture of silent and sound film with voice-overs and still-shot sequences on a site devoted to movies. It is absurd. This is not a movie in any sense that we understand it. Oh, you might call it 'experimental cinema', but what then? The general rule seems to be that such experiments are always successful, whether you're looking at the Empire State Building for 24 hours or reinventing basic Georges Melies camera tricks fifty years later. I reject such a standard as being no standard whatsoever. So where are we?

This.... well, this thing looks amateurish, although I do do enjoy the bursts of Groucho-style voice-overs. Over to other opinions.

First off, where did those preposterous ratings come from? Have any of those nincompoops actually seen the movie?

It's certainly understandable if they hadn't, as it is EXTREMELY rare. More's the pity. This movie is a whoopee, stops-out, take-no-prisoners satire of absolutely everything: independent film-making, pop music, American mores, psychology, politics, family, education -- whatever popped into Downey's head. It's completely plot less and totally absurd, and it feels very much like a "Monty Python" episode made by New Yorkers in the '60's.

It's absolutely hilarious and I could go on for days about the performances too (why didn't Elsie Downey and Lawrence Wolf have huge careers beyond their films with Downey?), but let's just leave it at this: if you ever get the chance, SEE IT.

I guess that it's not really a mystery why Robert Downey Sr.'s films get some weirdly bad reviews. Though his films are smart and hip, Downey goes after straight culture with an unmatched, gleeful, subversive eye, and generally hits what he aims at. Chafed Elbows epitomises this style, going after everything, including the making of movies itself. In Chafed Elbows, like Chris Marker, he uses still photographs to great effect, but more in the vein of National Lampoon magazine than F-Stop. This film plays like jazz, riffing from one theme to another, one scene to another, one character to another, eschewing plot for wit and speed and surreal wordplay. It's a wonder that this, and Downey's other movies, were ever made, they are so wonderfully offensive. His audience is, perhaps intentionally, small. The rewards, however, for those who do love his films, are great indeed. Viva Downey!