Who’s Minding the Store? (1963) by Frank Tashlin
Sunday, April 17, 1988, 8:00 pm
Idiot Savants: Jerry Lewis & Toto
Who’s Minding the Store? (1963), directed by Frank Tashlin, starring Jerry Lewis, 90 min.; Hawks and Sparrows (1965), directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, starring Toto, 91 min
Tonight’s program features two famous comics in films that use their humorous quirks as a way of making more general social criticisms. In Hawks and Sparrows Italy’s most famous and most silly comedian journeys throughout the country and finds out about the Uccellacci (big birds) and Uccellini (little birds), a metaphor for Italy’s class system. In Who’s Minding the Store?, Jerry Lewis plays a department store clerk whose unwitting antics manage to destroy the whole system of production and exchange — dialectic as represented by the women’s clothing department. Programmed by Peter Herwitz.