The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film

My main trouble with this film was that most of the gags sound a lot funnier in principle (and, presumably, in the minds of their creators) than they seem to come out in practice: it's only eleven minutes long, but I found my attention-span seriously flagging well before the end.

It is essentially a silent film, featuring a very basic soundtrack and some sound effects; in fact in its style it reminds me of the very early silent comedies (circa 1900) which basically consisted of random slapstick scenes cut together. I saw this in company with Cecil Hepworth's "Saturday Shopping" (1903), and in fact in some ways it's not dissimilar. On the whole it's what you might expect from a film that consisted of fooling about for a couple of Sundays in a field that cost the grand sum of five pounds to hire...

It's a pity, because a lot of the gags, if described, sound very ingenious (man uses woman as camera to photograph husband; clay-pigeon-shooter shoots down discus and engages in duel with the enraged discus-hurler). But somehow the execution seems so random and amateurish that I really didn't find it very funny: and in the absence of laughter, nonsense becomes extremely tedious.

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 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.)

"The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film" is not a film as such, but it is a short series of clips with a comical slapstick theme. This 'film' got Richard Lester recognised and paved the way for him to direct the first Beatles film: 'A Hard Day's Night".

Richard Lester directed and wrote the music for his first film in 1959. This film was entitled The Running, Jumping, & Standing Still Film. It was intended to be viewed only by those who had aided in its production. Since the film was intended to be viewed by Lester and his partners alone, a small amount of money and time was invested. The sole purpose of this film is entertainment, but the main reason for its existence is the fact that it served as an experiment to work the camera. The film cost 70£ to make, and it was filmed in sepia-toned film stock in a field on a couple of Sundays. All of the shots that were filmed were included in the finished production; the finished production is eleven minutes in length.

The Running, Jumping, & Standing Still Film is a comedy about English Sundays and the small hobbies that people do to pass the time. All of the events in this film take place in a field. A few of these comical events include a woman scrubbing a lawn, a man running around a tree stump with a needle to play a record, a photographer developing film in a pond, an artist aided in painting by the numbers on a model's face, a man building a tent, an athlete running over the tent, and a duel between a man with a knife and a man with a gun. Not only does the film poke fun at the hobbies that people do to pass the time away, but it also pokes fun at English culture when compared to American culture. Another one of several events in this film includes a group of men and a kite, which has been constructed out of the flag of the United Kingdom. One of the men jumps inside the kite while the other men attempt to fly it, and the kite breaks. According to Neil Sinyard, author of The Films of Richard Lester, this event symbolizes the United Kingdom as lesser in power and technology when compared to the United States during the space age. According to this scene, the British fly primitive kites while the Americans, the world-power after World War II, fly highly-advanced rockets and space shuttles.

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.