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  Projectionist, The My Life In Film
Year: 1971
Director: Harry Hurwitz
Stars: Chuck McCann, Ina Balin, Rodney Dangerfield, Jára Kohout, Harry Hurwitz, Mike Gentry, Lucky Kargo, David Holliday, Sam Stewart, Alex Stevens, Robert Lee
Genre: ComedyBuy from Amazon
Rating:  6 (from 1 vote)
Review: The Projectionist (Chuck McCann) is running a Gerald McBoing Boing cartoon before the main feature, but the film comes unstuck from the projector leading to catcalls and slow handclaps from the audience. He fixes it, but is more interested in his own daydreams, and when he hears of an old man being mugged over the radio, this sparks a reverie where he is actually his super hero alter-ego, Captain Flash, as if he were a character in an old serial or B-movie. Here Captain Flash has trouble in changing from his civilian clothes into his outfit, and we wonder exactly how heroic he is, but the Projectionist seems happy enough with his daydreams, which last all day...

This was the first of writer and director Harry Hurwitz's low budget comedies, and was obviously a work of a man who loved the movies, resembling a big screen fanzine of sorts. Perhaps loving the movies wasn't quite enough, however, as the film has no strong plot to speak of and rambles cheerfully from one fantasy sequence to the next, with real life making unwlecome intrusions along the way - nothing dramatic, simply interrupting the Projectionist's train of thought. That the tall, pudgy McCann sees himself as a super hero is the film's main joke, and he does pretty well in the more outright scenes of humour.

The first interruption, the breaking cartoon apart, is from one of the ushers, played by director Hurwitz in a blue uniform. He's trying to escape from the domineering manager, Renaldi, played straight by comedian Rodney Dangerfield in his debut, and is all ears when the Projectionist spins a yarn of how he met a beautiful woman (guest star Ina Balin) the other day. But considering she is only seen in black and white, as with the super hero sequences, we can't help but think that this tale is fantasy as well.

And when the woman turns up as the daughter of the old man in the Captain Flash sketches, our suspicions are even stronger. What really distinguishes the film are the old clips that are liberally peppered throughout the action, even taking the place of action. Sometimes they will take the form of trailers for non-existent films, at other times McCann will be edited into old movies, as when he visits Rick's Cafe Americain from Casablanca, making eye contact with the likes of Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet and, of course, Humphrey Bogart.

A lot of this is quite charming, and when we see how drab and humdrum the Projectionist's life is, wandering from work to his one room apartment via an adult bookstore, for example, we understand how much he needs the fantasy life provided by the silver screen. However, Hurwitz has pretentions to social comment as well, using his obvious editing talent by interspersing clips of the Nazis, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini into the storyline of the criminal mastermind The Bat (also played by Dangerfield) and his efforts to take over the world with his death ray. This tends to jolt you out of the starry eyed daydreams, and their point is obscure, but overall The Projectionist, while rarely laugh out loud funny, is an engagingly inventive tribute to the movies' power to make you forget your problems while mirroring them. Music by Igo Kantor and Irma E. Levin.
Reviewer: Graeme Clark

 

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