The Girl Chewing Gum (1976) User Reviews

Winner of the Oberhausen short film festival in 76...

[Carlito-Brigante · 8/10 · 6 May 2004]

As the short of jean-luc Godart, "Charlotte et son jules" (1960), or "the big shave" (1967) of scorsese, this short movie won the "famous" Oberhausen festival.

Yes, remember, in 1962, 26 movie-makers rated a proclamation at Oberhausen to make the German movie industry more modern and to say good-bye to the old-german-movie-style...So after that, a sort of "new-wave" appeared (in 68 for instance, Hellmut Costard made sensation with his short where people could see a talking-penis...that's maybe not the more interesting movie that had been maid, but it was a step for the expression freedom...).

And this year, the festival have 50 years old...and revealed a lot of new talent during this period (Zbigniew Rybczinski, the french Michel Gondry, the britain John Smith, the americans Laura Wadddington and Kenneth Anger...and that's in Oberhausen too that the first short of Roman Polanski were projected)

So that's in that environnement that "the girl chewing-gum" was projected in 1976...and, as a lot of movie of this festival, this one have a total liberty of narration. With a funny "british-touch" the director build the movie as he wants it to be (in a strict sense)...a rare curiosity that had to be seen as "the big shave" or so many...

humorous and mysterious short that questions the nature of cinema

[framptonhollis · 7/10 · 14 July 2018]

For a majority of its run time, 'The Girl Chewing Gum' is rather light, funny fun w/some interesting, possibly thought provoking undertones, but by the end it has, in my opinion, become something bizarrely darker than that. The main concept of the film is that its narrator is "directing" every car, character, etc. we see in this single documentary shot of daily life on a street in London, making it seem that every little thing in the shot is planned, despite the case being clearly to the contrary. It gets a little tedious after a few minutes, but eventually becomes more engaging in its latter part when it lets the cryptic overshadow the comic as we are made to question the narrator and some of his more unfocused and simply strange comments. Suddenly the camera is carrying off, and to me a feeling of darkness creeps under the final image's seemingly simplistic ground.

Funny if a little long for a one-joke short but the intelligent comment behind it more than carries it the rest of the way

[bob the moo · 10 July 2004]

On a busy London Street, video installation artist John Smith directs a scene the exact way that he wants it. As his 'cast' come and go in front of his camera he directs them in a constant narration, telling them exactly what he wants them to do. As he moves his camera around he demands increasing control over his environment and obedience from his subjects – be they people, cars, trucks, birds, clocks or buildings!

For the first few minutes of this short film I did actually think that things were happening in response to Smith's instructions, but then he order the big hand of a clock to move at the rate of one revolution per hour and the smaller hand to move at the rate of one revolution every twelve hours – then he got into birds and trucks and I got the joke (what can I say – I'm slow!). This was actually pretty funny at the start but after a while the joke worn a bit thin as it was basically the same thing over again – it would have been better if the film had been 5/6 minutes long, 10/11 was just too long for such a thin idea.

However the film did work for me as both a funny short and a clever one. I took it to be an expression of the artist John Smith's desire to control everything that he sees through his camera and that his 'direction' here is practically his ideal working situation! He wants everything just as he wants it but, as he shows here, the only way he is going to get that is by narration over film he has already shot. It was a clever and interesting idea and this carried me to the end of the short even if the laughs had worn out – contemplating this was the main goal I suspect and it achieved it and more!

Overall, like another review has snootily observed, very few people has seen this short film and it is a shame because it is sublime in its simplicity. As a comedy, the one-joke approach doesn't have the legs to last 10 minutes but as an expression of Smith's creative frustration that things never go quite how he wants them to, this is great stuff. I started the short laughing here and there but ended it in thought about how it must be hard for directors and artists to ever really put on canvas/film/video the vision that they truly have in their minds' eye. An intelligent and funny short!

Life imitates art?

[zahrady · 10/10 · 27 July 2008]

Excellent short film. In addition to previous comments, I'd like to add that the The Girl Chewing Gum could be seen as a visual rendering of the ubiquitous and unanswerable question whether "art imitates life" or "life imitates art".

The question this film actually poses, seems to be if reality exists in itself (that is, independent of something like culture, emotion, our actions in it, etc), which implies that we, human beings that we are, can never really touch upon it (that we are mere spectators) - or that reality is the product of man's intervening in it, the product of our relations with it and the actions we make.

In other words: does the girl chew her gum because she is "a girl chewing gum" (existing independently from her on screen appearance), or is she chewing her gum for the sole reason that she is being perceived chewing (by the camera, and by us)?

Dated and irrelevant

[Horst_In_Translation · 2/10 · 29 July 2016]

"The Girl Chewing Gum" is an 11.5-minute short film from 1976, so it has its 40th anniversary this year. It is one of the most known works by British filmmaker John Smith today. He is still very much alive and was in his 20s when he shot this film. I cannot say anything positive about this really. First of all, by 1976 it was really unusual to still make black-and-white films. second of all, everybody could have made this movie. He is just out in the street filming strangers and commenting on what they do and what he sees. So yeah, it's a documentary. People say the most interesting films are about random people who aren't famous at all, but this film shows that it can also be the least interesting films about this group of people. I definitely don't recommend the watch. Very boring little film.

Nothing special

[SixteenFiftyNine · 4/10 · 9 November 2023]

It seems as though John Smith was just out one day and shot some random film footage that he then decided to turn into a film short. After having viewed the footage he shot he came up with the idea that he would narrate it as though he were actually directing the players. But then along the way he's no longer the director, now he's more a commentator.

I found nothing interesting about this short beyond my curiosity to see what it was about. What's it about? Nothing. That seems to be the point but it's really not even particularly interesting to watch. Nothing special takes place and it's not particularly creative. Maybe for the time it was. Anyone could recreate this, toss it on Youtube and it wouldn't get any attention. Not that Youtube is a place for great film. Is that a statement about our lives now? Given I was teen when this was filmed I can't see it being interesting even then. We could have shot something equally as uninteresting in my HS film class. I can see why he titled it "The Girl Chewing Gum" since that girl in platform shoes is probably the most interesting element of the short. She's the only reason I rate it as high as I do.

I'll probably get a lot of downvotes on this but I'm not a pretentious film snob. I think if anything John Smith is laughing that some are so taken by this short.

Hubba Bubba.

[buckaroobanzai50 · 2 March 2004]

**MINOR SPOILER** (Ha ha ha!)

I have seen this...However, I am not surprised that many people haven't, judging by the big blank space on this page. This is one of those art house pieces. It is about ten minutes of various views of a street in East London England, with a voice-over by a nasal-voiced narrator, who describes what he wants to appear on-screen just before it actually does.

What it's trying to say to the audience beats me...maybe I'm not intellectual enough to get it...Or maybe, it's just a load of rubbish.

By the way, the girl chewing gum is not the star of the piece.

It's also funny to note that most of the fashions in it have come around again.