THE RUNNING, JUMPING AND STANDING STILL FILM

Peter Sellers, who devised it, describes this film as a study in "abstract humour"; and it takes the form (if that is the word) of a series of inconsequential observations. A char scrubs a field; a semaphore-limbed camper wrestles with a tent; an itinerant photographer itinerates in the most unlikely, pastoral, locality; a selfimportant Goon makes a laborious and totally abortive effort to assault the outer atmosphere in a paper kite made of Union Jacks; a guileless idiot obeys a beckoning hand, to receive a sound cuff for his trouble in coming half a mile; a fat man takes off his jacket and top hat, puts out the light and goes to bed.


"Perhaps it is not all quite abstract: the Goons are so solemn and self-possessed in their pursuits; and these pursuits are so absurdly improbable and fruitless, that one suspects the film has a meaning and a universal application. In style it lies somewhere between the anarchic surrealism of Buñuel and Dalí, and the quainter more humane fantasies of Carroll and Lear." ("Monthly Film Bulletin", n. 316, May 1960, p. 75)

"The Running Jumping and Standing Still Film, Lester's first film, comes in mind, It is a short film with Peter Sellers, shot in a single day in a field in North London. Every foot of film shot was used in the final twelveminute version. Its style harks back to the silent movies. It is very fast with vintage cars, twoman saws, and the ground which opens up and swallows the protagonists. When producer Walter Shenson saw this short, he thought of Lester for director of the Beatles' first film. To think of it really, it is a strange choice. Richard was born in PhiladeIphia and did not know anything about Liverpool or about the culture that gave birth to the Four. He was known for the 350 TV commercials that he made. It was a happy coincidence that when Shenson asked him about the job, he replied that he had worked with people who knew the Beatles and that he and Owens had gone all the way to Paris to see them." (Marco I. Zambelli, All You Need Is Beatles in Beatles, edited by F. Bianchi, G. Castaldo, M.I. Zimbelli, Reggio Emilia, Comune di Reggio Emilia, 1988)