- Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life
was made in 1913,
directed by Mack Sennett,
and is your quintessential chase film.
This film has every
single comedy chase trope
that you could ever want.
It has a villain with
a dastardly mustache.
It has a very beautiful young woman
who is tied to train tracks.
It has Keystone Cops on a handcart
that you often see in these films.
And it also has, at
that time, a celebrity,
Barney Oldfield, who was
the first man to ever
race a car at 60 miles
an hour in an oval lap.
So you have these three modes of action
occurring all at once:
the handcart, the
locomotive that is racing
towards the same spot,
and Barney in the car.
And it's really quite
breathtaking to watch
and see who will get there first.
Although it's telling what seems to be
an old-fashioned story,
it's also telling a story
that's all about speed
and movement and motion.
And I kept thinking
about Italian futurism.
The Italian futurists were
very interested in dynamism,
movement of all kinds, whether it be
the movement of a train in the city,
a gull flying through the sky,
or the Boccioni painting
of the Soccer Player.
Translate that static
movement from the canvas
to a film like Barney
Oldfield, and you have this
interrelationship of
futurism to the cinema.
Both deal with these
complex notions of movement.
