LITTLE FUGITIVE (1953)

Seventy years after an unheralded appearance, the little film that kick-started the New York School of independent filmmaking has lost none of its charm or sense of mischief.  A sort of outgrowth from Italian Neo-Realism, but shot thru with American optimism and ‘Noo Yawk’ attitude*, prime mover Morris Engel (along with Ruth Orkin & Ray Ashley) spins a childhood summer’s idyll about a runaway nine-yr-old who thinks he’s shot his big brother.  It’s really a prank by his brother & some friends, played out while their single-mother has left them on their own for a day and a half to check on ailing G’ma.  Richie Andrusco’s a revelatory non-Hollywood tyke (so too the rest of the discovered cast), hiding in plain sight among a sea of beach-goers at nearby Coney Island, eating one sugary treat after another, and generally having the time of his life once he discovers how to get a nickle deposit back from every empty soda bottle you nip.  (70 years on and the deposit STILL a nickel!)  And what a kindly world Engel paints for us; the boy never feels under serious threat (even alone overnight); he doesn’t even get sick from a diet of corn-on-the-cob and junk food.  And while it takes a minute or two to adjust to some fairly primitive looped dialogue, Engel’s photo-journalism background serves him well with truly lovely, atmospheric, now wonderfully nostalgic compositions of oceanfront hoi polloi and ‘Carny’ atmosphere at '50s Coney Island.  Early work by Cassavetes, Scorsese, Spike Lee impossible to imagine without this as precursor.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *Think of it as slaphappy Neo-Realism.  And while indie NY style evolved out of this, the film is probably closer to the two great tragic childhood fables of Albert Lamorisse, RED BALLOON/’56 and WHITE MANE out the same year.  But here shot thru with Brooklyn, New York resilience.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/02/crin-blanc-le-cheval-sauvage-white-mane.html

CONTEST: Engel drops the ball when brother & pals return from play but no one notices what they forgot to bring back with them after the ‘accident’ that sends young Joey running off to Coney Island.  What did the boys forget to bring back?  Win a MAKSQUIBS Write-Up of your choice with the correct answer.