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stephanmorrow
Reviews
Chafed Elbows (1966)
Never left me
Along with a few adventurous souls from Stuyvesant H.S. I went to see this at the Bleecker Street Cinema so I was very young. It was the first underground film I had ever seen and it was playing with Anger's 'Scorpio Rising'. In the late 60's these films were so ahead of their time that it was like being transported out of the world of the go go 60's into the Bizarro alternate universe. I don't even have more than a hazy memory of 'Chafed Elbows' except I think the mother character was crawling under the table at some kind of wedding to get at someone and that it was all in stop action - something else that was unheard of at the time. But again, to see it back then was like being initiated into some kind of cult of either hidden truth or bizarro Satanism. But both of those films have never left me. In fact, I was surprised when I came across this site and that it could actually be seen again. Way back then, going to the Bleecker Street Cinema, the mecca for European film like Fellini's work (the first time I saw '8 1/2' I couldn't quite figure out what I had just seen - it was like a phantasmagoria of a dream - but I knew I wanted to see it again) was like attending a congregation of some arcane underground religion - and there weren't that many true believers. Stephan Morrow, Artistic Director, The Great American Play Series