Chafed Elbows

This is among the strangest and most plot less comedies I have ever seen. After thinking about the film, I've realized that it the protagonist manages to be insane and incestuous murderer. The film sort of follows him around over the course of two "mental breakdowns" in which he encounters a "sock sniffer", marries his own mother, visits Heaven, and much more. The film is wonderfully satirical, and it makes fun of almost everything, much like the very best of Kurt Vonnegut's novels.

It's a highly creative work from a highly creative director, the underground filmmaker Robert Downey, Sr. At this point, I'm beginning to really adore Downey Sr.'s sense of humor. It's always very satirical, dark, and offensive, and his filmmaking style is highly experimental, surrealistic, and absurd. All of these elements of humor and filmmaking are right up my alley and it seems that I'm really going to enjoy the rest of the films on the "Up All Night with Robert Downey Sr." eclipse set from the Criterion Collection. I'm seriously looking forward to "Putney Swope"!

Chafed Elbows (1966)

** (out of 4)

A man is having an affair with a woman who just happens to be his mother. We see the guy leave his house and encounter several other people where he also suffers some mental breakdowns.

I'm slowly going through the work of Robert Downey, Sr. and to say his films had no plots would be an understatement but it's even more true with CHAFED ELBOWS. In fact, there's really no sort of plot here as we get a bunch of voice-over work, photo stills and every once in a while there's some moving images that often don't add up to much.

I will freely admit that the movie didn't work for me and more times than not it had a very hard time holding my attention. My attention span is usually pretty good but it certainly was all over the place with this film. The satire just didn't work for me and I honestly thought that more could have been done with the whole son-mother relationship.

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

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!