Gizmo

The multi-talented Howard Smith was an esteemed journalist long before he became a film director. Beginning as a photographer, he switched his concentration to writing and contributed pieces to major magazines and newspapers. He's most closely associated with a The Village Voice feature called "Scenes," which examined aspects of the counterculture. Smith's most noted reportage was of the 1969 Stonewall Riots. He was the only eyewitness journalist on the scene at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village when a clash took place between the NYPD and the city's gay community. In 1972, Smith produced and directed the nonfiction film Marjoe, an exposé of the child evangelist preacher Marjoe Gortner. It became a sensation and won a Best Documentary Oscar for Smith and his co-director Sarah Kernochan.

The success of Marjoe set Smith working on a different kind of documentary feature. Smith had been a childhood fan of inventors, but his Gizmo! (1977) is not a serious examination of the history of innovative inventions. He instead fashions a broad comedy re-edit of old news film and stock footage. Today's stock footage libraries set a high price on most authentic film from old newsreels, but in the 1970s a producer could buy a dupe negative of almost everything on film at a flat per-foot price.

Using a narration by Kathleen Cox, Clark Whelton and Nicholas Hollander, Smith ties together 80 minutes of amusing novelty footage, mostly from the 1930s and 1940s. The stated theme is the indomitable spirit of inventors and how failure is a necessary step to success. The comedy sprit is established from the beginning, with purposefully incoherent "double talk" narration by actor Milt Moss. The film clips are accompanied by humorous, sometimes mocking voiceovers.

The overall motto is, "Preceding every giant leap mankind takes forward, there are three steps backward." Most of the inventions strain credibility. Editor Terry Manning and researcher Carl Zucker raided old novelty shorts that had already gone out of their way to feature unlikely gizmos, some of which were surely gags invented for film use. Smith said that his film evolved through multiple test screenings; gag inventions that got laughs stayed and the ones that didn't were dropped. The fun is watching proud inventors make absolute fools of themselves. We see an automatic lawn mower, a nail-bite preventer, a snooze-proof collar and a dimple machine. Also displayed for our amusement is a bicycle that climbs trees, an elastic crossing gate and a clock that announces when it's time to rise and time to go to work. We soon realize that the show is pulling our leg...is an eight-foot Bible an invention, really?

Much of Gizmo! is turned over to novelty footage not about inventions at all. We see feats by strong men, including one who catches cannonballs with his stomach. A woman performs a high-wire act holding on with nothing but her teeth, and a remarkably flexible contortionist climbs through an unstrung tennis racket. One man demonstrates that he can blow up balloons with his ear. Viewers reacted to the comedy but also to the lively musical score, which includes the song "Lonely at The Top" by Randy Newman. Howard Smith's feature made the rounds of festivals in 1977 but waited until 1980 for U.S. release by New Line Cinema. The New York Times applauded the film's expert take on crackpot inventors, and most reviewers found it a laugh riot. The show finishes with a tiny bit of newly-shot film footage--after a familiar montage of impossible early flying machines, Smith cuts to a modern hang glider, accompanied by more comic double-talk.

By Glenn Erickson