NFR Project: 'Little Fugitive' (1953)

 

NFR Project: “Little Fugitive”

Dir: Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin

Scr: Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin

Pho: Morris Engel

Ed: Ruth Orkin, Lester Troob

Premiere: Oct. 6, 1953

80 min.

This film is revolutionary. It flies in the face of feature-film values as codified and exercised by the major film studios of the time. It is a hand-crafted, naturalistic little masterpiece.

Morris Engel was the prime mover of this project, an experienced photojournalist who wanted to make a film in a new way. Redesigning a hand-held movie camera created to be used in combat conditions, Engel wound up with an unobtrusive recording device that was shoulder-mounted, held at the waist, with a viewfinder that one looked down into. This allowed footage to be captured on the sly, without anyone noticing. This means that, in a film filled with milling crowds, every action and reaction of the bystanders was spontaneous and unrehearsed. (He shot in black-and-white, and silent; all the dialogue and sound effects was dubbed in post-production.)

Engel, Ashley, and Orkin came up with a simple story to tell. In Brooklyn, seven-year-old Joey lives with his 12-year-old brother Lennie and his widowed mother in a cramped lower-income apartment. The mother has to go and care for her own sick mother, so she leaves Lennie in charge of Joey for a day. Lennie resents this, and decides to play a prank on Joey. He and his friends convince Joey that he has shot and killed his brother; they tell him to go and hide himself.

Joey takes this very seriously. He goes home and grabs the six dollars his mother had left out for groceries and, avoiding all the policemen he sees, gets on the subway. It takes him to the boardwalk and amusements of Coney Island. There he actually thrives, happily riding rides and eating junk food. Joey is obsessed with horses, and when he finds a pony ride, he yearns to go on it – but he has spent all his money. He learns from another kid the trick of picking up and returning empty glass soda bottles on the beach for money. This he does, and rides over and over, until the pony-ride man asks him who he’s there with.

Joey gets scared and runs away, and ends up sleeping out in the open under the boardwalk. His brother, meanwhile, is frantic. He repents tricking his brother and searches for him fruitlessly.

The next morning, Joey wakes and returns to the pony ride. Finally, the pony-ride man tricks Joey into giving him his name and address. He looks up Joey’s phone number and calls his home. Lennie answers, and begs the man to hang on to Joey until he gets there. However, Joey sees the man talk to a policeman, and he takes off again. Now Lennie searches among the crowds at the beach. He spots Joey but then loses him. It’s only when it starts to rain that Lennie finds Joey all by himself, still picking up empty bottles. He tenderly brings him home again.

They get to the house and arrange themselves in front of the TV. Their mother returns minutes later. She thinks they have spent the entire day indoors and promises them that, on the weekend, she will take them to Coney Island as a treat. The brothers look at each other ruefully.

All of the actors Engel and company used were amateurs. There is definitely a script, but the filming is so low-key and natural that the drama appears to be improvised. Engel was a masterful photographer, and the visuals in the film – the gritty streets of Brooklyn, the fanciful confines of Coney Island, the play of the waves on the shore, are all rendered exquisitely. The images are sharp and gorgeous.

The filmmakers easily take us into the mind of the child at the center of the film. He is wracked by guilt, afraid of the cops, but then is easily distracted by pleasures the amusement park affords. In making a movie about ordinary life, the filmmakers seem to have taken a page from the Italian neorealists, who filmed stories about the lower classes and the poor on location with amateur actors. In turn, this film is said to have influenced the directors of French New Wave cinema.

At any rate, the key here is that, with no money, few resources, and a cast and crew of volunteers, Engel, Ashley, and Orkin created a compelling and coherent fiction film – one that can stand up against anything put out by Hollywood. American filmmaking of the time was studio-centered. The idea that you could use film to create your own unique, home-grown stories would lay dormant in the U.S. until the advent of the independent productions, so-called “personal” films, helmed by director/writer/actor John Cassavetes in the late 1950s.

Another of the filmmakers’ great achievements is capturing the look and feel of a certain place and a certain time. It’s New York City on a summer’s day in the early 1950s. The clothes, the manners, the surroundings are all preserved forever. It’s a specificity that generates universal understanding, a sympathy for the kids and the helpful adults who come together to tell this charming little tale.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Living Desert.