Even: As You and I (1937) User Reviews

EVEN - AS YOU AND I {Short} (Roger Barlow, Harry Hay and LeRoy Robbins, 1937) **1/2

[Bunuel1976 · 6/10 · 16 January 2014]

Unlike most of its companions on Kino's 2-Disc "Avant-Garde" set, this belated 12-minute film (surprisingly shot Silent) is an entertaining spoof on both movie-making and the general public's penchant to participate in nation-wide contests promising fame and fortune. On this preliminary viewing, it seems to be especially targeting Luis Buñuel's celebrated Surrealist short UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929) as a razor is seen cutting through various objects at one point…but, frankly, if there is anything that showed up these 'avant-garde' doodles for the amateur experiments with a new medium they truly were, it was Buñuel's first two movies!

Anyway, the three men who made the film under review also took on the leading roles, bringing their minds together (after understandably dismissing their thoroughly conventional initial idea of a "boy-meets-girl" narrative) to come up with a nonsensical scenario to film that would put them on the map. However, when they are done shooting and editing "The Afternoon Of A Rubberband"(!) – which, among other things, sees them lowering a camera inside a manhole to recreate a Surrealist painting and being engulfed in strips of celluloid! – the trio realize that the closing date for the submissions was already past…but their reasonable frustration is quickly brushed off when they stumble on an advert for yet another eye-catching competition!

Quite so!

[Polaris_DiB · 8/10 · 16 January 2010]

Oh man, this was great! Less an experimental film and more a send-up of surrealist films, this surprising and witty short is the very last one on the Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 20s and 30s Kino release. It's a nice note to end on because it's just a lot of fun! These three directors want to break into Hollywood, so when they see a contest for a short film, they put their heads together and try to come up with something to show. After a dry run of Boy Meets Girl ideas that don't get beyond the statement of the premise, they decide on making a Surrealist film instead--thus making this very film the type of tongue-in-cheek parody of the type you see in such stuff as the series Spaced. It's not a mean satire, but a loving homage as the characters run through the streets, sweat over yards of film (who's been there before, aye? AYE?!), pull it all together in a ridiculous mesh of silly juxtapositions (and Un chien andalou farces!), and!--end up getting it in too late to submit to the contest.

But it's all for the love of cinema! Film nuts of all ages can get behind something like this, and as such an early entry into the meta-parody genre, it's really refreshing to see even filmmakers had a sense of humor about film-making back when.

--PolarisDiB

A homemade homage to some of the classic film makers....

[planktonrules · 7 October 2011]

A Liberty-Pete Smith Amateur Movie Contest is announced. Three knuckleheads all work together to make a film but before they start filming, the see an article about Surrealism--and this greatly affects their work. Working separately, the three combine their footage into a final short that is HIGHLY reminiscent of the Salvador Dali/Luis Buñuel collaboration, "Un Chien Andalou" as well as Sergei Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin". It's all very clever IF you've seen these films. If not, it will be a chore--and very confusing.

This silent film appears to have been made using an 8mm camera. Considering it's very humble origins, it is a very effective short--but one that I really can't give a numerical score because of its oddness and lack of commercial appeal.