Its just mad. I'm a big fan of Sellers. This just blows everything else out of the water. When it comes to craziness this beats anything. Well almost anything. It makes No sense! please note it is not actually on this DVD its on another DVD in the UK REGION 2 The Peter Sellers Story... As He Filmed It please note this DVD also contains a short film called 'I Say, I Say, I Say' as well as a documentary about Peter Sellers, this includes an interview never seen before as Sellers confiscated the film the day after it was shot at his home in Ireland, feeling that it was too revealing about himself. Interesting Stuff I'm Sure You'll Agree. Anyway go watch "The Running Jumping Standing Still Film" Watch it just to say you have. If You are a fan of Milligan/Sellers/Secombe You must watch If You are a fan of short films or a student watch it. Its just so odd!!
17 Reviews
THE RUNNING JUMPING AND STANDING STILL FILM {Short} (Richard Lester, 1960) **1/2
Bunuel197625 February 2014
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!
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!
The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film was an interesting early work of director Richard Lester
tavm15 February 2009
Just watched this early Richard Lester short starring Peter Sellers on YouTube. It's basically a silent one with a music score and speeded-up images done for humorous effect. Sellers is both a photographer and a hunter here. I also noticed Graham Stark-who I've seen in the Pink Panther movies with Sellers-in this film. There were a few comic touches-like that man using a horn with a needle running around a tree stump as that needle touches a record on the stump or duel of two men with one carrying a sword and the other carrying a gun with another guy with a horn in his ear in between them-that I thought was highly amusing while others-like a woman "washing" on the grass-was a little lame. Still, since The Beatles hired Lester to helm A Hard Days Night because of this short, I'd at least recommend The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film for historical purposes.
A Fun Trip
nnad17 September 2001
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.
A Weird Experiment
gavin694213 September 2014
There is no plot as such. This is a slapstick comedy. It shows a lots of gags.
By itself, this film is nothing special. A weird experiment with some gags, it somehow got nominated for "best short film". What really makes it noteworthy is that the film contains Peter Sellers, who went on to be one of the greatest comedians of all time.
Also, this film leads to "A Hard Day's Night", which changed the way the world looked at music on film. Apparently the Beatles loved this short film and just had to have director Richard Lester work with them. Who knew?
By itself, this film is nothing special. A weird experiment with some gags, it somehow got nominated for "best short film". What really makes it noteworthy is that the film contains Peter Sellers, who went on to be one of the greatest comedians of all time.
Also, this film leads to "A Hard Day's Night", which changed the way the world looked at music on film. Apparently the Beatles loved this short film and just had to have director Richard Lester work with them. Who knew?
a series of humorous clips
rebeljenn29 December 2005
"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.
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.
more avant-garde than comic
cherold16 September 2019
This odd short was so beloved by The Beatles that they chose its director, Richard Lester, to direct their movie, A Hard Day's Night. Damned if I know why.
Basically this is a bunch of people running around in a field. While billed as a comedy, I was half-way through its 10-minute run before I laughed at anything. It wasn't just that there wasn't anything funny; there wasn't anything that indicated to me that it was supposed to be a comedy. It was more like an experimental avant-garde short.
Eventually there are a couple of funny gags, but those ten minutes crawled by. I don't know what the Beatles saw in it, but it escapes me.
Basically this is a bunch of people running around in a field. While billed as a comedy, I was half-way through its 10-minute run before I laughed at anything. It wasn't just that there wasn't anything funny; there wasn't anything that indicated to me that it was supposed to be a comedy. It was more like an experimental avant-garde short.
Eventually there are a couple of funny gags, but those ten minutes crawled by. I don't know what the Beatles saw in it, but it escapes me.
A nutty little masterpiece
woid30 January 2007
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.)
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.)
Some funny people appear in a most unfunny short that still somehow managed to earn an Oscar nomination!
planktonrules3 April 2022
"The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film" has a very humble pedigree. It was reportedly made for 70 pounds and was filmed over two Sundays....and yet it managed to earn an Oscar nomination! While the film stars some very talented folks, such as Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan and Richard Lester, the film is incredibly unfunny and plotless. And, yes, I do mean plotless. Instead of a coherent plot, various folks run about doing silly (but not funny) things. If the writing had been better and they taken more time, I might have enjoyed it. Instead, I am sure it came as a total surprise that the film got nominated in the first place! Overall, rather pointless but fortunately Sellers soon went on to much greater things and perhaps this film gave Richard Lester a chance to hone his craft...sort of a trial and error experience...with mostly error.
If you care, this film lost to "The Golden Fish", a short by Jacques Cousteau.
If you care, this film lost to "The Golden Fish", a short by Jacques Cousteau.
Incorrect date of the film 'Running Jumping and Standing Still'
perrotma5 July 2009
I first saw the film 'Running Jumping and Standing Still' well before 1960 at the News Cinema at London's Waterloo Railway station sometime in the 1950's, so the film shouldn't be dated at 1960. I had just arrived off a train from Camberley, Surrey and I was on my way to an assignment in the North East Scotland. To kill some time I went into the News Cinema and after the news I saw 'Running Jumping and Standing Still' after seeing it once it gripped me so much I stayed and saw it not just a second time but many times until the cinema closed for the night. Having missed my train for Scotland which had left Kings Cross around 7pm I found accommodation in London for the night and caught my train to Scotland the next evening. I made up some story about missing my train when I got to the Hotel and luckily, my editor never found out that I got to Fraserborough a day late. I got the Hotel to backdate my bill and the story was still hot. Why do I know I saw it in the 1950s, 1) The Waterloo station news cinema had been closed before 1960. 2) I got married in 1959 and I know I saw it before my marriage, in fact well before I had even met my wife. 3) In the cast were all the Goons including Harry Secombe. It was in Black and White and it was about characters flying a kite. Further research should show that I saw the film in 1954 or 55, so it must have been made before then.
Boring film
mrdonleone28 December 2019
Warning: Spoilers
Is running jumping in Staunton still cinemas really about nothing but a bunch of lunatic in the style of last frontier walking around in the field doing nothing and nothing in nothing at all in this is why the movie so incredibly boy to see because you see nothing that take a picture day dance they do basilica the rest movies about nothing because of this movie really sucks and ask Muslim free do not like this movie the mall that's it inshallah
Marvelous madness!
Moxie8 September 2004
Warning: Spoilers
It's been several decades since I saw this very short exercise in divine absurdity. I recall that mirth reigned unconfined. It was just so delightfully, zestfully silly!
The only bit I remember from it now (I don't think this is qualifies as a spoiler; farce thrives on repetition) was Peter Sellers playing a phonograph record.
He placed the record in the center of a flat-topped tree stump. Then, carrying an old gramophone "horn" that terminated in a phonograph needle that touched the record, he ran round and round the stump, the music speeding up as he ran faster.
I remembered the film's name all these years though resigned to never seeing it again... but now it's available on DVD!
If you like Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, the Goons, Monty Python, or just silliness in general, don't miss this one!
The only bit I remember from it now (I don't think this is qualifies as a spoiler; farce thrives on repetition) was Peter Sellers playing a phonograph record.
He placed the record in the center of a flat-topped tree stump. Then, carrying an old gramophone "horn" that terminated in a phonograph needle that touched the record, he ran round and round the stump, the music speeding up as he ran faster.
I remembered the film's name all these years though resigned to never seeing it again... but now it's available on DVD!
If you like Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, the Goons, Monty Python, or just silliness in general, don't miss this one!
Delightfully nutty comic short
Woodyanders5 July 2018
Warning: Spoilers
This eleven-minute romp may not make much sense, but it nonetheless amuses and entertains thanks to the substantial level of infectiously anarchic energy and unbridled imagination evident throughout. Basically a series of wacky skits that all take place in an open field, this film pokes merry fun at the various things people do to pass the time which include flying a kite, taking photographs, playing a record, and painting of portrait of a beautiful woman, all of which are given decidedly loopy interpretations. Director Richard Lester stages everything with utmost precision and considerable vitality. Moreover, it's performed with aplomb by such notable comedic talents as Peter Sellers, Leo McKern, and Spike Milligan. Done with no dialogue, but set to a jaunty jazz score, it's a real hoot and a half.
An odd little collection of oddments which defies description
llltdesq1 July 2014
Warning: Spoilers
This short was nominated for the Academy Award for Live Action Short. There will be spoilers of a sort ahead:
This short was reportedly done on the cheap on two successive weekends and wound up being nominated (deservedly so) for the Academy Award. It is a plot less wonder, a mad, joyous thing to behold.
It's a series of vignettes. slightly overlapping but essentially separate from each other. Some work and some don't, but my choices as to which worked and which didn't probably differ from yours. Along the way, you'll see photographers, a man in a tent, an athlete tossing the hammer, the oddest portrait sitting I've ever seen, an even odder duel and a man with an ear for music and an unusual way of playing records, among others.
None of the individual parts are terribly long, so even if one doesn't quite click for you, another one will be along soon and most people are bound to enjoy something. It's very improvisational.
This short is available as an extra on the dual-format release of A Hard Day's Night recently done by Criterion. It and the Blu Ray/DVDs themselves are well worth a look. Recommended.
This short was reportedly done on the cheap on two successive weekends and wound up being nominated (deservedly so) for the Academy Award. It is a plot less wonder, a mad, joyous thing to behold.
It's a series of vignettes. slightly overlapping but essentially separate from each other. Some work and some don't, but my choices as to which worked and which didn't probably differ from yours. Along the way, you'll see photographers, a man in a tent, an athlete tossing the hammer, the oddest portrait sitting I've ever seen, an even odder duel and a man with an ear for music and an unusual way of playing records, among others.
None of the individual parts are terribly long, so even if one doesn't quite click for you, another one will be along soon and most people are bound to enjoy something. It's very improvisational.
This short is available as an extra on the dual-format release of A Hard Day's Night recently done by Criterion. It and the Blu Ray/DVDs themselves are well worth a look. Recommended.
The Goons are tedious here
Igenlode Wordsmith14 September 2011
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.
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.
12.18.2023
EasonVonn19 December 2023
Warning: Spoilers
Lester's first movie. There are a number of classic video concepts seen in it, such as the use of telescopes to transform the POV along with images that evoke voyeurism in the viewer, and the use of cinematic tools to reproduce other arts, such as paintings (and more than a little bit of a mockery of formalization of the object, which is put into a facsimile in a non-genuine way, as a kind of mockery of formalism).
Music, theater. There is also the breaking of the fourth wall, from the frontal appearance of the camera at the beginning, with the staring at the camera at the end, to the final character dominating the end of the movie.
But most iconic of all is the choice of nature scenes. Back to nature, I guess! Movie Artists.
It's hard to correlate the trivial plot of the film, which is more like a spectacle re-enactment composed of a cutthroat drama.
Music, theater. There is also the breaking of the fourth wall, from the frontal appearance of the camera at the beginning, with the staring at the camera at the end, to the final character dominating the end of the movie.
But most iconic of all is the choice of nature scenes. Back to nature, I guess! Movie Artists.
It's hard to correlate the trivial plot of the film, which is more like a spectacle re-enactment composed of a cutthroat drama.
Must see for Sellers fans
awkins20 May 1999
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