TRIBUTES AND RETROSPECTIVES

Escapes

Little Fugitive

Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin
1953 - United States - 1h20

Screenings : monday 22 - 10:30 am - Pathé - 1 - presented by Oscar Constantin - sportif thursday 25 - 4:30 pm - Pathé - 1

Brooklyn in the 1950s. Lennie's mother gets him to babysit his little brother Joey as she's got to visit their sick grandmother. Lennie had been planning on spending the weekend with his friends. He's annoyed about having to take his little brother with him everywhere, so he decides to play a trick on him by faking a shooting accident…

Little Fugitive has virtually no dialogue, but nevertheless succeeds in taking us into the heart of the contradictions of childhood (between guilt and joy) through Joey's coming-of-age journey through the Coney Island funfair. A story of growing up, Ashley, Engel and Orkin's film was shot freehand outside and laid down the foundations of the cinematographic revolution to come, from New York realists (like Shirley Clarke and John Cassavetes) to Jean-Luc Godard who rushed his cameraman Raoul Coutard out to New York to study the revolutionary camera developed by one of Engel's friends. “The incredible feeling of freedom felt by little Joey jumps out of the screen and (…) the scene where the little boy, sent dizzy by the turning of the carrousel, is swept away by the noise, and the fear and the guilt (of having shot his own brother and yet feeling so free) is quite exemplary.” (Fabien Reyre; Critikat)

CAST AND CREW

Cast : Richard Brewster, Winifred Cushing, Jay Williams, Will Lee
Screenplay : Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin
Cinematography : Morris Engel
Editing : Ruth Orkin, Lester Troob
Music : Eddy Lawrence Manson

Production : Little Fugitive Production Company

French distributor : Carlotta