Short of the Week: ‘How It Feels to Be Run Over’
Since the conception of our Short of the Week column, we have always highlighted cinema from the margins. We have championed experimental approaches to film art, often venturing into the territory of the surreal. However, we can guarantee that you’ve never seen anything like this.
If you’re a fan of David Cronenberg’s boundary-pushing 1996 body horror masterpiece Crash, meet its predecessor from 1900. Directed by Cecil Hepworth, How It Feels To Be Run Over might be less than a minute in its runtime, but it captures something that is essential about the cinematic medium.
This 120-year-old short doesn’t just feature one of the greatest titles in the history of cinema. It’s a fascinating and perplexing film, placing the camera on a road where out-of-control vehicles revel in the anarchy generated by the potential of a collision. That potential energy is dizzying, transforming the cinematic experience.
Hepworth teases the audience by using two different vehicles, initially teasing the viewer with a horse-drawn carriage that passes by the camera. However, it’s the second car – an automobile – that heads straight for the camera and is completely unapologetic about imposing explosive violence on the audience.
There’s something interesting about the destabilisation caused by the automobile, a theme that Hepworth also explored in his 1900 short Explosion of a Motor Car. A trick film, it features a similar automobile which bursts into flames and causes the demise of everyone unlucky enough to ride it.
How It Feels To Be Run Over is the superior of the two, exposing the core principles of voyeurism – a masochistic fetish to feel something you can never feel. It also might have the strangest concluding inter-title of all time. The words “Oh, mother will be pleased” flash on the screen right after the car crashes into the camera. Who hurt you, Cecil?
Watch the short below.
