How to Sleep

This is a delightful short that packs more laughs into ten minutes than you'll get from some feature-length comedies. Although it's been shown occasionally on the Turner Channel, How to Sleep was hard to find in a home-viewable format until recently, when it was included as a special feature in the new DVD release of the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera. Robert Benchley's low-key, whimsical humor serves as a nice lead-in to the Marxes' more aggressive style of comedy.

Mr. Benchley acts as our affable host/narrator, covering such topics as 1) the causes of sleep, 2) methods of inducing sleep, 3) methods of avoiding sleep, and 4) how to wake up, which, we're told, "is very important." But this is no dry academic lecture. Our host, who happens to sport the most outlandish pajamas ever designed, helpfully serves as actor as well, demonstrating various positions such as the Supine Curl, the Ventrolateral Sprawl, and the Sleeping-Sitting Standing Crouch. He is aided in his analysis of sleep by some highly amusing animated segments.

This is a film better seen than described. I only wish I could enjoy it with a large audience in a theater, as it must be a real crowd-pleaser. How to Sleep won the Oscar for Best Short Subject of 1935, and led to Benchley's series of how-to short comedies for MGM and Paramount (including How to Read, How to Eat, etc.), but this one may well be the very best of his output. Heartily recommended.

Anyone can easily relate to HOW TO SLEEP, especially if you've spent a sleepless night in a thousand different positions as illustrated by Benchley in this '35 short subject.

In this good natured spoof, he starts out trying a hot bath but never gets beyond sticking his toe in the warm water before draining the water out and deciding to go back to bed. Similarly, when he decides to get a drink of warm milk, he ends up snacking on leftovers in the refrigerator, defeating his purpose.

It goes on in this vein with water dripping from a faucet being the final annoyance that keeps him awake. Finally, he's just about to fall asleep when the alarm clock rings and it's a lost cause.

As a fellow insomniac, I found it was most amusing when he demonstrated all the sleeping positions someone goes through when they toss and turn. Funny stuff with the usual dry commentary from Benchley.

How to Sleep (1935)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Robert Benchley made dozens of shorts in his career and this here is perhaps the best known. One reason is the title and subject itself but another is the fact that this was Best Short Subject at the Oscars. In the film Benchley explains that sleep comes from the blood flowing out of the brain. The comedian then explains some of the possible ways to make this happen before he turns his attention to the many positions one sleeps in at night. I'd be lying if I said this short deserved an Oscar but in its own way it's pretty clever and it certainly ranks as one of the best in the "How to..." series. I think this one benefits from the subject matter as well as some neat animation used. One example is when we see the blood leaving the brain and another happens later when Benchley is counting sheep. Neither thing is going to make you forget Walt Disney but it was a nice added touch. There are some pretty funny moments here including one where Benchley discusses the various positions someone is in while asleep and mentions that a normal person moves over fifty times a night.

One of life's imponderables. Why is it that when we have no need to get up in the morning, we can rest easy but when we do, we toss and turn until ten minutes before we need to get up? Well this quite amiable short feature allows Robert Benchley to talk us through the do's and don'ts of trying to get some sleep. Late night fridge-raiding doesn't help, nor do dripping taps, or open windows or too much bedding. Apparently, we change positions at night some fifty-five times and using some fun time-lapse photography and an entertaining narration we look at some of the comfortable, foetal and downright ridiculous postures we adopt whilst trying to keep the blood from our brains for seven or eight hours per night. There's the tiniest bit of science to this, but mainly it's quite an enjoyable laugh at behaviour that we can all recognise, and when that is put into words it renders our solo night-time acrobatics suitably ridiculous.

The only thing tougher than having to follow the Marx Brothers is having to go on before them. How to Sleep was one of 3 short films that opened for A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races. For an 11 minute short, it is just long enough to keep the attention of an audience member from 1935 and 2005. Many of the short musicals and comedies that ran 20 - 30 minutes sometimes failed to hold its audiences attention before the main feature. How to Sleep is an original and interesting 'moc'umentary about how to fall asleep. A quick taste test before the real meal, How to Sleep is still funny to an audience 80 years later. Robert Benchley is great as a leading man who is funny be acting serious.