Editing Little Fugitive (1953 film)

{{Short description|1953 film by Morris Engel, Raymond Abrashkin}}
{{Use American English|date=January 2025}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=April 2019}}
{{Infobox film
| name           = Little Fugitive
| image          = Little Fugitive (1953 film poster).jpg
| alt            =
| caption        = Theatrical release poster
| director       = {{Plainlist|
*[[Raymond Abrashkin|Ray Ashley]]
*[[Morris Engel]]
*[[Ruth Orkin]]}}
| producer       = {{Plainlist|
*Ray Ashley
*Morris Engel}}
| screenplay     = {{Plainlist|
*Ray Ashley
*Morris Engel
*Ruth Orkin}}
| starring       = {{Plainlist|
*Richie Andrusco
*Richard Brewster}}
| music          = Eddy Manson
| cinematography = Morris Engel
| editing        = {{Plainlist|
*Ruth Orkin
*Lester Troob}}
| studio         = Little Fugitive Production Company
| distributor    = [[Joseph Burstyn|Joseph Burstyn Inc.]]
| released       = {{Film date|1953|9|2|[[Venice Film Festival]]|1953|10|6|United States}}
| runtime        = 80 minutes
| country        = United States
| language       = English
| budget         =$25,000<ref name=gross/>
| gross          =$500,000<ref name=gross>{{cite magazine|magazine=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]]|url=https://archive.org/details/variety209-1958-02/page/n84/mode/1up?view=theater|title=Unless Shoestring Is Goldplated, Distribs Snub 'True Independent'; Offbeat Saga of Morris Engel|author-link=Hy Hollinger|last=Hollinger|first=Hy|date=February 12, 1958|page=5|via=[[Archive.org]]|access-date=September 25, 2021}}</ref>
}}
'''''Little Fugitive''''' is a 1953 American [[Independent film|independent]] [[drama film]] co-written and co-directed by [[Raymond Abrashkin]] (credited as Ray Ashley), [[Morris Engel]], and [[Ruth Orkin]], which tells the story of a child alone on [[Coney Island]]. It stars Richie Andrusco as the title character, and Richard Brewster as his older brother. The film was screened at [[14th Venice International Film Festival]], where it was awarded the [[Silver Lion]], and nominated for [[Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay|Best Writing, Motion Picture Story]], at the [[26th Academy Awards]].

An acknowledged influence on the [[French New Wave]], the film is considered by modern-day critics to be a landmark film because of its naturalistic style and groundbreaking use of nonprofessional actors in lead roles. In 1997, it was selected for preservation in the United States [[National Film Registry]] by the [[Library of Congress]] as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".<ref>{{Cite web|title=New to the National Film Registry (December 1997) - Library of Congress Information Bulletin|url=https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9712/nfr.html|access-date=2020-11-24|website=www.loc.gov}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Complete National Film Registry Listing |url=https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/|access-date=2020-11-24|website=Library of Congress}}</ref>

The film is the first and best known of Engel's three feature films. It was followed by ''[[Lovers and Lollipops]]'' in 1956 and ''[[Weddings and Babies]]'', which was filmed in 1957 and released in 1960. All three films were stylistically similar and were filmed with hand-held [[35mm movie film|35&nbsp;mm]] cameras. The cameras used for ''Little Fugitive'' and ''Lovers and Lollipops'' did not record sound, so the dialogue and sound effects had to be dubbed subsequent to filming, but ''Weddings and Babies'' holds the distinction of being the first fictional feature filmed with a portable camera that allowed for synchronized sound.

==Plot==
[[Image:Little Fugitive screenshot.jpg|left|thumb|Richie Andrusco in ''Little Fugitive'']]
Seven-year-old Joey Norton lives in an apartment in a lower-middle-class neighborhood of [[Brooklyn]]. During the summer, his older brother Lennie has to watch him when their widowed mother is at work, which Lennie resents somewhat. Joey loves horses and likes playing with Lennie and his friends, though they often pick on him.

On Lennie's twelfth birthday, he gets a harmonica and some money to spend at [[Coney Island]], where he is excited to go the next day with his friends Harry and Charlie. When he and Joey get home for lunch, however, they learn their grandmother has fallen ill and their mother is leaving for a day to care for her, which means Lennie will have to postpone his trip to Coney Island so he can stay home and babysit Joey. Frustrated, Lennie finds his friends and tells them the news, and they imagine various outlandish and macabre ways of dispatching Joey before deciding to play a prank.

Harry steals his father's rifle, and Lennie brings Joey to an empty lot to see it. The older boys only pantomime firing, but when it is Joey's turn, Harry puts a bullet in the chamber. Joey closes his eyes when he fires, and Lennie puts ketchup on his shirt and acts as though he has been shot. Charley and Harry tell Joey to run and hide, saying they will give him an hour's head start before notifying the police. Joey takes the six dollars his mother left for Lennie to buy groceries and heads out.

Spooked by police officers in the street, Joey winds up on a train to Coney Island. He goes on rides, has his picture taken, plays carnival games, and buys a lot of food. By the time he happens upon the pony ride, he does not have enough money left to pay for it, leaving him crestfallen.

After making his way down to the crowded beach, Joey sees a boy collecting empty glass bottles. Although he is not sure what the boy is doing, Joey begins to help, and the boy explains that the five-cent [[Container-deposit legislation|deposit]] for each bottle can be redeemed at a stand under the boardwalk. The boy's older brother does not let the boy share the money from the modest initial haul with Joey, so Joey sets out on his own to earn money for the pony ride. He alternates between collecting bottles and riding ponies until Jay, the nice man who works at the pony ride, asks who is watching Joey, which causes him to get frightened and run away.

Joey wanders aimlessly around Coney Island for the rest of the evening and, after sleeping under the boardwalk, the next morning, as well. He is at the pony ride when Jay arrives for work, and this time Jay is able to get Joey's address under the guise of offering Joey a job. Jay looks up Joey's phone number and lets Lennie know where Joey is, but Joey sees Jay greeting a police officer on the way back from the phone and runs off again.

When Lennie gets to the pony ride and learns Joey is gone, he begins to search for his little brother. At one point, he sees Joey from the parachute ride, only to lose him in the crowd on the beach. Eventually, a rainstorm clears the beach, and Lennie sees the lone figure of Joey collecting bottles.

The brothers head home, arriving minutes before their mother returns. Thinking they have just been sitting inside watching television since she left, she says that, the following weekend, she is going to take them to get some fresh air at Coney Island.

==Cast==
*Richie Andrusco as Joey Norton
*Richard Brewster as Lennie Norton
*Winifred Cushing as Mother
*[[Jay Williams (author)|Jay Williams]] as Jay, the Pony Ride Man
*[[Will Lee]] as Photographer
*Charlie Moss as Harry
*Tommy DeCanio as Charley

===Cast notes===
The lead character of Joey was played by Richie Andrusco, a nonprofessional actor who never appeared in another film, and most of the other parts were also portrayed by nonprofessionals. Director/writer/editor Ruth Orkin has a small role as the woman with a baby on the beach. Actor [[Jay Williams (author)|Jay Williams]] later co-wrote the "[[Danny Dunn]]" series of juvenile science fiction novels with director/writer/producer [[Raymond Abrashkin]]. The Coney Island photographer was played by [[Will Lee]], who went on to play Mr. Hooper on ''[[Sesame Street]]''.

==Production notes==
The film was filmed on location at [[Coney Island]] and in [[Brooklyn]] using a unique concealed strap-on camera, which made it possible for Engel to work without a tripod or a large crew and allowed him to have thousands of beach-going New Yorkers as extras without their knowing it.<ref>[http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/bc/spotlite/news/092803.htm Brooklyn College Web Site]. Last accessed: November 18, 2009</ref> This innovation proved to be "the heart and soul of why ''Little Fugitive'' was possible."{{Attribution needed|date=December 2022}} The camera could be seen as a prototype for the [[Steadicam]] and was designed by Engel and his friend the inventor Charlie Woodruff, a fellow World War&nbsp;II combat photographer who Engel called a "mechanical and engineering genius." Over the years, filmmakers such as [[Stanley Kubrick]] and [[Jean-Luc Godard]] reportedly were eager to borrow this unique camera.

===Engel's unique camera===
Engel was an experienced photo-journalist when he was asked in 1939 by his friend [[Paul Strand]] to shoot some motion picture film for his film ''[[Native Land]]'' using the  compact 35mm [[Bell and Howell]] [[Eyemo]] holding 100 foot rolls that could film about one minute of film. But he was disappointed that Strand put this camera designed for hand-holding on a heavy metal baseplate attached to a heavy wooden tripod.<ref>Joel Schlemowitz, ‘’Experimental Filmmaking and the Motion Picture Camera'', Routledge, London and New York, 2019, pp. 153-153</ref>

During World War II he was a still photographer but he probably was familiar with a handheld 35&nbsp;mm battery-operated camera developed during the war for combat photography, the Cunningham Combat Camera. The large square camera was mounted a rifle stock, held tightly to the cameraman's chest by handles mounted on each side, and aimed in the general direction of the action, sighted by a top-mounted viewfinder. With a two hundred foot magazine, it could run for two minutes. The other primary motion picture camera used by the military was the [[Bell and Howell]] [[Eyemo]], a spring-run camera held to the eye with a 20-second running time.<ref>Richard Koszarski, ''"Keep'Em in the East" - Kazan, Kubrick, and the Postwar New York Film Renaissance'', Columbia University Press, New York, 2021, p. 334 See photos of the camera at "The First Real Combat Camera", ''American Cinematographer'', November, 1942 reprinted in March 2020 at http://we.acs/the-first-real-combat-camera.com accessed 1/31/2023</ref>

After the war, Engel and an engineer he met in the service, Charles Woodruff, reconfigured the Cunningham camera into a much smaller camera for civilian purposes. Engel explained, "Designed for me, it was a compact 35mm, hand held, shoulder cradled, [with] double registration pins and twin lens finder and optical system."<ref name="Schlemowitz, p. 154">Schlemowitz, p. 154</ref> It used the Cunningham 35mm 200 foot interchangeable magazines which met the camera at the film gate with the lens, motor, shutter, and viewfinder comprising the camera body. Twin lens geared together enabled the viewfinder lens and the camera to be focused together, as on Engel's preferred still camera, the [[Rolleiflex]]. Like the Rolleiflex, the viewfinder was viewed from above. Held against the waist, rather than in front of the face, the camera was both steadier and less conspicuous than the Eyemo. "With a simple shoulder belt support," Engel said, "I was armed with a camera which became the heart of the esthetic and mobile approach to the film the ''Little Fugitive''.<ref name="Schlemowitz, p. 154"/> This camera was about the same size as the Eyemo, but looked like a giant [[Ocarina]] with the camera in the wide part at the top and the smaller curved part below.<ref>Photos of Engel's camera can be seen on the "Morris Engel" page on Facebook and on Schlemowitz, p. 154</ref>

Film teacher Joel Schlemowitz says, "The film’s storyline, about a young boy gone on the lam among the boardwalk, beach, and amusements of Coney Island, provided the opportunity to film in situations well matched to this unobtrusive camera's virtues. The Rolleiflex-inspired chest-level configuration also assisted in giving the film its sense of visual rapport with the film's child actor, placing the camera at eye level with the youngster's view of the world."<ref>Schlemowitz, p. 155</ref>

==Reception==
===Critical response===
The film was greeted by critical acclaim at the time of its initial release. [[François Truffaut]] was inspired by its spontaneous production style when making ''[[The 400 Blows]]'' (1959), and he said years later that "Our [[French New Wave|New Wave]] would never have come into being if it hadn't been for the young American Morris Engel, who showed us the way to independent production with [this] fine movie."<ref name="TCMarticle">{{cite web|url=https://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/220887 |title=Lovers and Lollipops |access-date=April 4, 2008 |last=Sterritt |first=David |author-link= David Sterritt |work=Turner Classic Movies |publisher= [[Turner Classic Movies]]}}</ref>

Modern critics have also praised the film. Dennis Schwartz called it "A remarkable indy classic, made on a shoestring budget by a group of still photographers. It's an affecting lyrical comedy-drama that fully captures the flavor of urban childhood innocence of the 1950s. [...] The dialogue was sparse, the story was unambitious, the film lacked drama, the children were very ordinary and their problem was only a minor one, nevertheless this beautifully realized film caught the world through the innocent eyes of a curious and scared child and left an impression that was hard to shake. It was uplifting to watch because the effort was so genuine."<ref>{{cite web|last= Schwartz |first= Dennis |title= Little Fugitive |url= http://www.sover.net/~ozus/littlefugitive.htm |type= Movie review |date= December 11, 2003 |access-date= June 7, 2016}}</ref>

When the film was screened in New York after Engel's death in 2005, film critic Joshua Land wrote: "''Little Fugitive'' shines as a beautifully shot document of a bygone Brooklyn—any drama here resides in the grainy black-and-white cinematography, with its careful attention to the changes in light brought on by the inexorably advancing sun [...] Filled with 'Aw, fellas!' period ambience and the mythic imagery of cowboys and horses, comics and baseball, it's a key proto-[[Cinéma vérité|vérité]] slice of urban America."<ref>{{cite news|last= Land |first= Joshua |title= Brooklyn Dodger: The Return of a Forgotten Indie |date= April 12, 2005 |access-date= June 7, 2016 |newspaper= [[The Village Voice]] |url= http://www.villagevoice.com/film/brooklyn-dodger-the-return-of-a-forgotten-indie-6403886 |quote= An underseen indie-film landmark and an invaluable artifact of local history to boot}}</ref>

On [[review aggregator]] website [[Rotten Tomatoes]] the film has an approval rating of 93% based on 45 reviews, with an average score of 8.4/10; the site's "critics consensus" reads: "A simple story well told, ''The Little Fugitive'' presents a kid's-eye view of the city that feels refreshingly authentic."<ref>[https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/little_fugitive_1953/ ''Little Fugitive''] at [[Rotten Tomatoes]]. Last accessed: September 16, 2021.</ref>

===Accolades===
'''Wins'''
*[[14th Venice International Film Festival|Venice Film Festival]]: [[Silver Lion]] (Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin)
*Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists: [[Nastro d'Argento|Silver Ribbon]], Best Foreign Film (Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin)

'''Nominations'''
*Venice Film Festival: [[Golden Lion]] (Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin)
*[[6th Writers Guild of America Awards|Writers Guild of America Awards]]: [[Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written Drama|Best Written American Drama]] (Ray Ashley)
*[[26th Academy Awards|Academy Awards]]: [[Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay|Best Writing, Motion Picture Story]] (Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin)<ref>[https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1954 1954|Oscars.org]</ref>

'''Other honors'''
*added to the [[National Film Registry]] in 1997

==Remake==
Joanna Lipper completed a [[Little Fugitive (2006 film)|remake of the film]] in 2005, which had its world premiere at the 2006 [[Seattle International Film Festival]] as part of the New American Cinema Competition.<ref>[http://wbff.org/films/detail.asp?cid=1&fid=565 Brooklyn International Film Festival]. Web site, 2008. Last accessed: February 15, 2008.</ref>

==References==
{{Reflist|2}}

==External links==
*{{IMDb title|id=0046004|title=Little Fugitive}}
*{{TCMDb title|id=81526|title=Little Fugitive}}
*{{YouTube|OMG3rGcW1c0|''Little Fugitive'' trailer}}
*''Little Fugitive'' essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, Bloomsbury Academic, 2010 {{ISBN|0826429777}}, pages 477-478 [https://books.google.com/books?id=deq3xI8OmCkC]

{{Silver Lion (1953–1994)}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:1953 films]]
[[Category:1953 drama films]]
[[Category:American black-and-white films]]
[[Category:American drama films]]
[[Category:Films set in Coney Island]]
[[Category:Films set in Brooklyn]]
[[Category:Films set in New York City]]
[[Category:United States National Film Registry films]]
[[Category:American independent films]]
[[Category:1950s English-language films]]
[[Category:1950s American films]]
[[Category:1953 independent films]]