Quicker'n a Wink

A Smith called Pete talks a lot while we look at high-speed motion pictures. In cooperation with scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, we get to look at a bunch of things we rarely get to see: a pencil popping a balloon, a hummingbird's wings as it flies, a bullet fired at a light bulb... and see that things happening at such speeds are not as we usually imagine them.

These specialized cameras, Pete informs the audience, can record images at up to 1,500 times the normal speed. It was impressive enough to win an Oscar. As this sort of effect has become much more accessible, the novelty of this short has diminished, even though it's still a lot of fun.

Harold E. Edgarton invented a stroboscopic camera that allows us to see such things as the moment of impact when a football is kicked, a bullet as it shatters an electric light, a cat lapping milk with its tongue forked downward and curled below to scoop up the milk, a dentist drilling a tooth as bits of enamel fly around, and a man driving a golf ball through a telephone book.

This Pete Smith Specialty is one of their more serious attempts to enlighten us on how things really happen but escape detection from the human eye.

What I missed was seeing Dave O'Brien doing his physical pratfalls and assorted acrobatics, so this was of minor interest to me.

Quicker 'n a Wink (1940)

*** (out of 4)

Oscar-winning Pete Smith short introduces us to Dr. Harold E. Edgerton who helped develop stroboscopic photography, which gives us the ability to use slow motion to see something that would otherwise be too fast to be seen. This is yet another winning short from director Sidney who made quite a few of them before turning to features. This movie is certainly one of the more entertaining ones from Smith who adds his typical fun narration. We see various objects including a hummingbird, a lightbulb being shot, a bubble being popped, a cat drinking milk and others. All of these are rather entertaining like how a cat actually drinks and many of them, like the bubble, are very funny. Another nice sequence was a kicker kicking a football.

I do like Pete Smith's narration style, and here it's at its borderline sarcastic best as he tries to explain the scientific theories behind the new slo motion stroboscope or "flicker box" which uses light that flashes up to 2000 times per second to help capture the perfect focus when manipulating the speed of action photography. We see that to good effect as a phone book gets targeted by a golf ball, a cat laps up it's milk and we even see the precision with which a pencil penetrates the wafer thin side of a bubble before the astonishing imagery of a bullet being tracked from a gun barrel to shatter a glass light bulb. Imperceptible to the naked eye, but clear as "a Californian morning" for us here. The gist is maybe laboured a little as once we've got the point as the imagery repeats itself a little too much with milk and humming birds, and the denouement in the dentist's chair takes slow motion (and accompanying audio) just a tad too far for those of us with a sensitive disposition! If science were taught at school with this degree of amiable light-heartedness then maybe we'd remember more about it! Good fun.

Just watched this Pete Smith Specialty short on the Go West/The Big Store DVD. Directed by George Sidney, we see lots of slow motion scenes of milk being hit with the liquid going up and down, a bubble being burst, a light bulb getting shattered, etc. Smith has some humorous comments during many of what I mentioned. Audiences of the time must have been truly impressed since this was before TV pervaded the public imagination and the slow-motion instant replay in live sports events were in constant use. There are supposed to be ten lines written on this site before this review can be submitted but I really can't think of anything else to say. Well, except I highly recommend Quicker'n a Wink.