| The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film | |
|---|---|
) Title card | |
| Directed by | Dick Lester Peter Sellers |
| Produced by | Peter Sellers |
| Screenplay by | Spike Milligan Peter Sellers Mario Fabrizi Dick Lester |
| Story by | Peter Sellers |
| Starring | Peter Sellers Spike Milligan |
| Music by | Dick Lester |
| Cinematography | Dick Lester |
| Edited by | Dick Lester Peter Sellers |
Production company | Peter Sellers Productions |
| Distributed by | British Lion Films |
Release date | November 1959 |
Running time | 11 minutes[1] |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | £70 |
The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film is a 1959 British sketch comedy short film directed by Richard Lester and Peter Sellers, in collaboration with Bruce Lacey. The film was released in 1959.[2]
It was filmed over two Sundays in 1959, at a cost of around £70 (including £5 for the rental of a field).[3]
It was nominated for an Academy Award, but did not win.[4] It was a favourite of The Beatles, which led to Lester's being hired to direct A Hard Day's Night and then Help!, in which Lacey makes a guest appearance as George Harrison's gardener in the opening sequence.[5]
The short film has been made available as a special feature on several home video releases of A Hard Day's Night. It is also featured in The Unknown Peter Sellers and a BFI released collection of rarely seen films from Bruce Lacey's career entitled The Lacey Rituals. It is also included as a special feature of the Studio Canal issue of I'm All Right Jack.
Cast
- Richard Lester
- Peter Sellers
- Spike Milligan
- Mario Fabrizi
- Bruce Lacey
- David Lodge
- Leo McKern
- Norman Rossington
- Graham Stark
Critical reception
BFI Screenonline concluded that the film's lasting legacy "was its influence (as part of Milligan's overall body of work) on British comedy in general, and on Monty Python's Flying Circus (BBC, 1969-74) in particular. This is evident not only in its surreal humour, but in the way that elements of one routine are threaded through subsequent scenes, transcending the stand-alone sketch form - a tactic subsequently favoured by the Python team."[6] Empire magazine called it "Sublime slapstick surrealism."[7]
See also
- List of avant-garde films of the 1950s
References
- ^ "THE RUNNING JUMPING & STANDING STILL FILM - British Board of Film Classification". www.bbfc.co.uk.
- ^ "The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (1959) - Richard Lester, Peter Sellers - Cast and Crew - AllMovie". AllMovie.
- ^ "Running Jumping & Standing Still..." A Short History of The Telegoons... The Goon Show Preservation Society. Retrieved 2 July 2008.
- ^ Philo, Simon (6 November 2014). British Invasion: The Crosscurrents of Musical Influence. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9780810886278 – via Google Books.
- ^ James, David E. (10 December 2015). Rock 'N' Film: Cinema's Dance With Popular Music. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199387625 – via Google Books.
- ^ "BFI Screenonline: Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film, The (1960)". www.screenonline.org.uk.
- ^ Parkinson, David. "The Running, Jumping And Standing Still Film". Empire.
External links
- The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film at IMDb
- The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film at AllMovie
- The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film at the BFI's Screenonline
- The short film The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film is available for free download at the Internet Archive