LITTLE FUGITIVE B+
USA (75 mi) 1953
d: Morris Engel co-directors:
Ray Ashley and Ruth Orkin
This is a small and often overlooked film that tends to fall
through the cracks, rarely part of the discussion of Orson Welles in the 50’s or
John Cassavetes in the 60’s when one recalls the history of American
independent or low-budget films, where the film is listed here: AMERICAN
INDEPENDENT FILM - Movie List on mubi.com, but not here: American independent films. Made for just $30,000 during the heyday of
the studio system, the film is barely mentioned next to the influential, independently
financed films made outside the studio system, such as Welles’s OTHELLO (1952)
or MR. ARKADIN (1955), or experimental short films made prior to that. LITTLE FUGITIVE (1953) was the first
independent feature to be nominated for an Academy Award, in this case Best
Original Screenplay, while also winning a Silver Lion Award at Venice. Shot using a cinéma-vérité style, this American film predates most
of Jean Rouch’s documentaries, one of the founding fathers of the style, and is
often cited as having an influence on François Truffaut’s The
400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups) (1959), one of the seminal works of the
French New Wave, while also having an impact on the Iranian New Wave films from
the 70’s to 90’s that often sought to tell religious or metaphorical stories
through a child’s eyes. Storywise, the
film is something of a cross between The
Cat in the Hat, a mischievous children’s book by Dr. Seuss that suggests
pure anarchy exists while Mom’s away, and the Chaplin Silent era where the
Little Tramp lives on the fringes of society, usually a victim of
circumstances, often observing the exploits of people of privilege from the
vantage point of a hungry Tramp having nothing at all. After Mom goes away for a 24-hour period due
to an emergency medical situation in the family, she leaves behind two
mischievous brothers who are instructed to stay home, 12-year old older brother
Lennie (Richard Brewster) and 7-year old younger brother Joey (Richie
Andrusco), leaving a few dollars on the table for food. But these boisterous kids are seen earlier
continually hanging out on the cramped streets of Brooklyn, New York with other
boys, exploring the vacant lots nearby, shooting guns at targets, and even
playing baseball in the streets, perpetually hanging outside, only coming
indoors when they’re hungry, so the idea of staying home all day seems beyond
their capabilities.
As the youngest, the older boys continually pester and pick
on Joey, usually trying to get rid of him, as they really don’t like him
tagging along, a spoiled and often whiny, freckle-faced kid with dirt and slime
constantly on his face with an everpresent toy gun in his holster, so they
design a cruel hoax where it appears Joey has shot his older brother, using
ketchup like they do in the movies. Believing
the worst, suddenly wracked with guilt and afraid of all policemen, Joey is
encouraged to high-tail it out of town “until the heat dies down,” suddenly
feeling all alone in the world. Grabbing
the money his mother left on the table, he hops on the subway, getting off at
the end of the line, which happens to be Coney Island, wandering around alone,
where the rest of the film is a somewhat mystifying, mostly wordless odyssey through
an amusement park as seen through a child’s eyes, initially dejected, lost and
alone, but eventually discovering the delights of the crowds, the funhouses,
the merry-go-round, ball-throwing and shooting galleries, batting cages, cowboy
photographs, pony rides, not to mention all the food vendors, where Joey can be
seen eating to his heart’s content. Shot
in Black and White, a minimalist film told in a naturalistic manner, the overall
key to the film is using a portable, hand-built 35mm camera by Charlie Woodruff
that could be strapped to the shoulders, designed by the cinematographer and co-director
Morris Engel who refused to use a tripod, insisting upon the mobility of constant
street movement, a remarkably effective technique that caught the eye of young
American director Stanley Kubrick who wished to rent the camera and Jean-Luc
Godard who wished to purchase it. Engel
was able to hold a remarkably steady camera image long before the development
of the Steadycam. Of interest, much like
Italian Neo-Realism, the film was shot without dialogue, so every word of
dialogue had to be re-synched back in the studio afterwards, where the earliest
sequences suffer the most, resorting to predictably generic dialogue, while Engel’s
wife Ruth Orkin co-edits the film, a first time experience for both of them,
teaming up with a friend, Ray Ashley, to co-write, co-direct, and co-produce
the film.
Joey eventually discovers the crowds at the beach, learning
he can return disposable pop bottles for a cash refund, where he interweaves
throughout the human throngs grabbing discarded bottles, receiving a nickel for
each returned bottle, where the stark and somewhat downbeat realism of his existential
wanderings often contrast with a few whimsical moments when he plays with even
smaller kids. Joey’s real passion is the
pony rides, which he returns to again and again, developing a friendly
relationship with Jay Williams, the Pony Man, who eventually suspects something
is up with a kid wandering around without any adult supervision, which only
scares the poor kid off, where one of the most hauntingly beautiful scenes is
the transition into nightfall Little Fugitive: Nightfall
scene - YouTube (1:38), where the musical soundtrack throughout is Lester
Troob’s lone harmonica, using “Home On the Range” as the movie’s musical
theme. In the morning, Joey dusts
himself off after spending a night outdoors and washes his face in the public
fountain, copied identically by Antoine Doinel in The
400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups).
In the early hours when the beach is empty and there are no crowds, the
Pony Man again befriends Joey, letting him help with the horses, trying to
alleviate his suspicions, but also acquiring information where he obtains an
address or phone number, getting ahold of Lennie who makes a beeline to the
Pony Man at Coney Island, but Joey has again disappeared, where the camera
follows Lennie in his search for his younger brother, oddly similar, but due to
the age difference, less compelling, as Joey is the real star of the show,
giving a heartbreaking performance that can’t be matched by anyone else,
literally owning the audience’s sympathies.
Veering back and forth between sidewalk shots and aerial views, giving a
time capsule glimpse of Coney Island, there’s a gorgeously photographed
rainstorm where people rush for cover, where the beaches empty and crowds hover
under the bleachers waiting the rain out, reminiscent of an era when people had
time to wait, where they weren’t rushing to get somewhere, but could simply
wait out a storm. Afterwards, Joey is
once again alone on the vast emptiness of the beach, engulfed by the enormity
of it all, just a speck in the sand until his brother spots him, where of
course no one makes any mention of an adventure when Mom returns home. The film was inducted into the Library of
Congress National Film Registry in 1997.
