The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (1959)
½ — The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (1959)
There are short films that punch well above their weight, and then there are short films that struggle to justify even their modest running time. The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film sits firmly in the second category, at least according to certain viewers, though its curious place in British comedy history has kept people talking about it for over sixty years. Released in 1959 and produced under the Peter Sellers Productions banner, it is an eleven-minute collection of loosely connected comic vignettes, filmed in a single weekend in a Surrey field on a budget so negligible it barely registered as one. The whole project was produced for next to nothing, reportedly a few hundred pounds, which makes it one of the more extreme examples of low-budget British filmmaking even by the standards of its era. For context, 1959 was the same year that gave us formally rigorous work like Pickpocket, so the contrast in craft and intention could hardly be more pronounced.
The film was co-directed by Richard Lester, then a television director building his reputation, and Peter Sellers himself, who was at this point a rising star of stage and radio thanks to his work on The Goon Show. Lester's interest was clearly experimental, less in the formal academic sense and more in the spirit of simply throwing things at a wall and seeing what adhered. The connection to Goon Show sensibility is impossible to miss: the film operates on the same logic of wilful absurdism that characterised that radio programme, though without the benefit of a scripted structure or a sound engineer keeping things clean. The piece went on to earn an Academy Award nomination for Best Short Subject (Live Action), a fact that has surprised and baffled audiences ever since in roughly equal measure. More consequentially for film history, it caught the eye of the people who would later hire Lester to direct the Beatles films, making it a genuine, if accidental, stepping stone in British popular culture.
On screen, the film features Sellers alongside Spike Milligan, the two of them essentially improvising physical comedy in an open field, joined by character actors Mario Fabrizi and David Lodge in supporting turns. Sellers and Milligan were, by any reasonable measure, comic talents of the first order, and their names have lent the film a reputation that precedes the actual experience of watching it. Whether that reputation is entirely warranted is another matter entirely. Fans of British comedy from this period who have also spent time with another comedy from a later era will find the freewheeling, sketch-driven approach at least contextually familiar, even if the execution here is rawer and less polished. The film sits in an odd position: too rough and ready to be called a polished short, too connected to famous names and careers to be dismissed entirely, and too frequently cited in the history of British comedy to be ignored.
The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (1959) is barely a film. Shot on what appears to be discarded film stock, the visuals are murky, poorly lit, and frequently out of focus, less "lo-fi charm" and more "did they record this on a potato?" The audio is actively hostile: a persistent, high-pitched feedback whine drones beneath every scene, making even the brief moments of attempted humor physically uncomfortable to sit through. At just 11 minutes, it feels interminable. What little content exists amounts to a string of disjointed sketches that mistake randomness for wit. Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan (talents capable of genuine brilliance elsewhere) meander through fields performing half-baked gags. There's no rhythm, no escalation, no payoff. The jokes don't land because they barely take off, they're ideas scribbled on a napkin. Yes, it spawned Richard Lester's later work with The Beatles, but that's like praising a mud puddle because it inspired a swimming pool. Some films age poorly; this one was aged upon release. A technically shoddy exercise that mistakes amateurism for avant-garde daring. Among the worst shorts I've ever watched and I've seen Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
And honestly, the Academy Award nomination, which I keep coming back to, does more to raise questions about that year's shortlist than it does to rehabilitate what's on screen here. I can appreciate that Lester went on to do genuinely interesting work, and that Sellers was a performer of real range and skill, but none of that changes what this particular eleven minutes actually is. Sometimes the historical footnote is more interesting than the thing being footnoted. If you're curious, by all means watch it, it won't take long. Just maybe keep the volume down.
Rating: ½ | Year: 1959 | Watched: 2026-03-12
Where to watch
Watch in the US
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from United Kingdom: Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Shinjuku Boys (1995) · The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) · Blue (1993)
More from the 1950s: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Letter from Siberia (1957) · Invaders from Mars (1953)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
