A plain, ordinary, and somewhat dumpy little man lives alone with his little mutt dog in a shabby apartment in an urban section of Brooklyn. One day, while walking the streets and looking into store windows, he sees a pair of shoes that he feels will change his appearance and hence, his social life. - After purchasing the shoes, he goes home, gets cleaned up, dressed uo, and goes out with his new shoes on. He hoes to a depressing, almost empty diner/luncheonette and meets an equally unattractive and dumpy-looking female. Enboldened by his new shoes, he strikes up a conversation with her and even dances with her to a tune on the juke box. While seated in a booth, we can see under the table that she is skuffing his new shoes with the soles of her shoes. - After this encounter, he returns home and polishes his new shoes before going to bed. In the morning, when a garbage truck comes to pick up the building’s trash, the man’s little dog grabs the shoes in his teeth and takes them downstairs and places them by the garbage pail. The garbageman picks them up, throws them in the pail, then empties the garbage pail into the truck. The truck drives away. The shoes are gone. When the man wakes and realizes that the dog took his shoes, he runs downstairs and looks both ways on the street for the garbage truck, but it’s long gone. He slowly walks back upstairs where his little mutt is waiting for him. - This 25 minute film is mostly without dialog, except for the meeting in the diner. All through the film we see how much the dog loves this lonely man. We have to wonder if this devoted little dog, seeing how the new shoes got the man out of their home to meet another person, actually got rid of the shoes to keep the man home with him. |
|
|
Ratings: | IMDB: 8.2/10 | |
Released: | January 1, 1961 | |
Runtime: | 25 min | |
Genres: | Short | |
Cast: | Buddy Hackett Jacquelyn Hyde | |
Crew: | Ernest Pintoff | |
grasshopper rex : I believe this is Ken Burns 1st biography of someone that isn't an American icon, and he c...