In the 1917 animated British short EVER BEEN HAD? … wait, before I get into the plot, there’s the title. I was wondering if John Lydon was inspired by it. Maybe that’s the whole reason I suggested catching the BFI’s program of British silent toons…
In the 1917 animated British short EVER BEEN HAD? (by cartoonist Dudley Buxton) the man in the moon (pictured) has a fight with his wife (the woman in the moon, pre-Fritz Lang) and falls to earth (pre-Thomas Jerome Newton) where he meets the last surviving Englishman, weeping against a backdrop of smoldering ruins and volcanoes. The distraught Brit explains that, because Britain signed a premature peace treaty ending WWI a year early, Germany secretly rearmed and attacked with electric rays, destroying the fleet, the British Zeppelin Force (BZF) and London.
Then it’s suddenly revealed that the old weeper is really a movie actor, and that Britain fought the war of attrition to its bitter end, and now there’s only one German, a small one, kept in the zoo.
As John L. Sullivan would say, it’s a film that teaches a lesson. But it does it in such a bizarre manner that you don’t mind.
A modest first day’s viewing — this program of shorts, two features (one of them the 55 minute masterpiece DAINAH LA METISSE, the other the delightful Italian comedy LA FORTUNA DI ESSERE DONNA with Sophia & Marcello) plus an intro by Maestro Scorsese. BUT it looks like we’re going to be ambitious and try to make it to the midnight showing of REVENGE OF THE CREATURE in 3D, what with Jack Arnold having been on our minds lately.
shadowplay 