Skaterdater
The film tells a story with no dialogue. The group of boy skaters are suddenly at a point when one of the boys sees a young girl, and becomes interested in her. This causes a rift with the other boys, who challenges him to a skating duel that goes down a hilly street. The young boy loses. However, he gets the girl, and shortly, a few other girls are seen and become interested in the boys, too. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2010.
Details
Release Date: 11/11/1965
Runtime: 17 minutes
Languages: English
Director: Noel Black
00Production
Companies: Byway Productions, United Artists
Countries: United States of America
Cast
Gallery
Gallery
Reviews
CinemaSerf
If you imagine a sort of preppy version of the “Jets” or the “Sharks”, only with skateboards instead of flick-knives then you’ll be on the right track for this really quite unremarkable short feature. A group of early teen lads show off their balancing skills around town until one of them espies - quite clumsily - a girl, then he becomes something of a jelly and a teased one at that. He looks at her, she looks at him, and we look on embarrassed at the early, nervous, stages of their rite of passage. Now some of the photography does show the agility of these often bare-footed boys and there’s a decent score to accompany their wheeled acrobatics, but otherwise this is quite a long seventeen minutes watch and maybe it’s just my age, but I found them both - the lad, especially, just implausibly young and green for us to want to watch their hormones start their lifetime journey. It’s not that it is cheesy, it’s just that it’s cringey.
