Film Record: Dummy Walks Out

Date produced: 1935

Filmmaker(s):

M. P. Gamber

Walter Mills

Country of Production:

United States

Languages:

English

Length:

100 ft

Format:

8mm

Colour:

B&W

Sound Notes:

Silent

Awards/Recognition:

ACL Ten Best 1935

Description:

"Structurally sustained by only the slimmest of plot incidents, Dummy Walks Out is in essence an etude in cinematics, sparkling with brilliant photography and bravura with striking angles. An evening of bridge, consistently bad cards to one player and, in time, the dummy walks out — such is the simple scheme of this masterpiece in miniature. Throughout its brief footage, however, the producers, M. P. Gamber. ACL, and Walter Mills, ACL, have contrived a gleaming glossary of cinematic imagination which delights the eye and beggars analysis. Near shot, closeup and extreme closeup (in several scenes, a single playing card fills the entire screen) follow one another with graphic beauty. Dummy Walks Out is a brilliant answer to the timid souls who "alibi" that the Eights can't take it." Movie Makers, Dec. 1935, 534, 550.

Resources:

"Dummy Walks Out was designed originally as the record of a room which Messrs. Gamber and Mills, ACL, as students of furniture design, had decorated for their own pleasure." Movie Makers, Dec. 1935, 536.

The film was available in the ACL's Club Film Library.

Subjects:

• Ethnology
•      Manners and Customs
•           Family life
•               Entertaining

Genre:

• Experimental

Form:

• Short

Tags:

Screenings:

• Screened by the Chicago Cinema Club in 1935: Chicago, IL
• Screened by the Metropolitan Motion Picture Club in 1935, and in 1947: New York City, N.Y.
• Screened by the Los Angeles 8mm. Club in 1936: Los Angeles, CA
• Screened by the Chevy Chase Cinema Club in 1937: Washington, D.C.
• Screened by the Seattle 8mm. Club in 1938: Seattle, WA
• Screened by the North Canton Cinema Club in 1939: Canton, OH
• Screened by the Hawk Eye Movie Makers in 1940: Mason City, IA
• Screened by the Tri-City Cinema Club in 1940: Moline, IL
• Screened by the Tri-City Cinema Club in 1940: Rock Island, IL
• Screened by the Tulsa Am-Mo Club in 1941: Tulsa, OK
• Screened by the New York 8mm. Motion Picture Club in 1944: New York City, N.Y.

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