The Lincoln Library Film Society will be showcasing the work of acclaimed New York photographer and filmmaker Morris Engel in December. Along with photographer Ruth Orkin, Engel pioneered the use of hand-held cameras in cinematography, which, along with other techniques, helped them capture true slices of life and weave images of everyday reality into their fiction films.
A native of Brooklyn, Engel spent five years as a combat photographer during World War II. He was an active member of the Photo League, a left-wing photo cooperative based in New York, which produced and distributed socially-themed work. It was there that he met Ruth Orkin, a freelance photographer from Los Angeles, who would later become his filmmaking partner. Their 1953 film Little Fugitive, with its infusion of documentary photography with staged narrative, is considered an important forerunner to the films of John Cassavetes and the French New Wave films of Truffaut and Godard. The films that the pair made, along with Engel’s subsequent solo work as director and cinematographer, comprise an independent cinema before there was independent cinema, having proved highly influential over the many facets of postwar realism to follow.
Tuesday, December 10 at 7 p.m.
Lovers and Lollipops
USA / 1956 / in English / 82 minutes.
The follow-up to Little Fugitive is similarly made on a minuscule budget, with money raised by Engel and Orkin, and filmed using highly portable cameras. The film depicts the efforts of Peggy, a seven-year-old, to thwart the blossoming romance between her fashion model mother, Ann, and Larry, an engineer. The film brings to life the textures and nuances of city life with wit and charm, favoring authenticity over narrative efficiency, and once again shows how ordinary children can be more genuine and demonstrative than many adult actors.
Ruth Orkin: Frames of Life
USA / 1996 / in English / 18 minutes
This short documentary, directed by her daughter, Mary Engel, charts the chronology of Orkin’s career through photographs and film clips.
Tuesday, December 17 at 7 p.m.
Weddings and Babies
USA / 1958 / in English. 81 minutes
This more mature film by Engel, his first to use synchronous sound, won the Critic’s Award at the Venice Film Festival in 1958. It merges a ground-level naturalism, seen in his earlier films, with increased production values. Al, a photographer living in New York, feels pressure from his girlfriend, Bea, to marry and settle down. His elderly mother, whom he recently put in a nursing home, only complicates things as Al tries to get his life in order. The film uses improvisational performances and naturalistic settings, with cinematographer Engel picking up on the detailed emotional resonance of everyday life.
Morris Engel: The Independent
USA / 2008 / in English / 28 minutes
Mary’s portrait of her father assembles interviews and clips, bringing some of the original cast of Little Fugitive back to Coney Island.
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