Watch ‘The Florida Project,’ Then Watch These Movies

By Christopher Campbell

We recommend more films with little rascals and hidden worlds.

Although it has been out a while, The Florida Project is a movie that will continue to be discovered and enjoyed long after it leaves theaters. Awards attention, most of it insufficiently focused solely on Willem Dafoe’s supporting performance, will help in this.  As will, hopefully, the extended praises of critics such as myself and features like ours discussing its use of color or genuine locations or highlighting its influences and likeminded works, as this list does.

Our Gang films (1922-1944)

Not only has filmmaker Sean Baker acknowledged the influence of Hal Roach’s Our Gang (or The Little Rascals) series of films on The Florida Project but the new movie gives thanks to the classic comedies — specifically mentioning Roach, directors Gus Meins and Robert F. McGowan, and child star George “Spanky” McFarland — in its end credits. Baker has truly loved these shorts (and one feature) since childhood, and they previously inspired parts of his earlier features, as noted in a 2012 IONCINEMA.com interview:

“When I was growing up, Hal Roach’s ‘Our Gang’ shorts would play on local NYC television around 3pm everyday. I always ran home from school to catch them. I consider Gus Meins and Robert F. McGowan to be two of the truly underrated directors in cinema history. Their work with the Rascals and Laurel & Hardy remains some of the best comedy I’ve ever seen. Both ‘Prince of Broadway’ and ‘Starlet’ are directly influenced by ‘Our Gang’ shorts. ‘Choo-Choo!’ has a scene where Spanky continuously punches an adult in the face… our homage is little Prince slapping Lucky in the face. And the character of Grandma played by Zeffie Tilbury in ‘Second Childhood’ was the inspiration for Sadie in ‘Starlet.'”

As for the ‘Our Gangs’ films’ influence on The Florida Project, Baker has addressed it just about every interview done in promotion for the movie. And it’s right there in the press notes, as well:

“A modern day ‘Our Gang.’ This is how I like to describe ‘The Florida Project.’ ‘Our Gang aka The Little Rascals’ — The Hal Roach-produced comedy shorts of the ‘20s and ‘30s, essentially focused on children who lived in poverty during the Great Depression. But their economic state was the backdrop. The children’s humorous adventures were the focus.”

That, of course, describes the situation of The Florida Project, with the backdrop there being related to the recent Great Recession. From the housing market collapse through the subsequent financial crisis, many families that became homeless moved into motels like the ones in Kissimmee, Florida, that Baker features in his movie. The context is far more apparent and dramatic in The Florida Project, though, even if the children are themselves just as ignorantly blissful as the “Little Rascals” are in their films.

 

Forbidden Games (1952)

Children during wartime is always a fascinating subject matter for movies, because of that similar happy unawareness (or half-awareness) of the true dangers and devastation going on. I like Nick Allen’s mention of Rene Clement’s Forbidden Games in a RogerEbert.com interview with Baker as having a similar “sense of ‘do these kids not know life sucks?'” Of course, the kids in The Florida Project aren’t in as dire a situation as French children in World War II, witnessing parents and pet dogs gunned down by enemy planes, but there is a relative, analogous theme between them.

Forbidden Games is about a little girl about the same age as Moonee in The Florida Project — and like newcomer Brooklyn Prince, the still-working Bridgitte Fossey gives one of the best child performances of all time. After her family is killed, she is taken in by a peasant farming family as she deals with the loss. The film is funnier than you’d expect, or perhaps you would because, like Baker’s movie, it’s following kids (the girl befriends the farmer’s son) as their lives remain more innocent and imaginative and mirthful despite the time. But also like Baker’s film (to lesser degree), Clement’s was criticized for making light of the serious subject matter.

There are numerous other movies worth recommending with the same idea, including Hope and Glory, Grave of the Fireflies, Ivan’s Childhood, Turtles Can Fly, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Tin Drum, and Life is Beautiful, in which a father attempts to shield his young son from the horrors of the concentration camp they’re in. But Forbidden Games is, as far as I can tell, really the first of the kind.

 

Little Fugitive (1953)

If you leave The Florida Project wishing you could see what happens next as the kids sneak into Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, check out this little indie classic and pretend it’s a sequel. Little Fugitive, which earned an Oscar nomination for its screenplay, follows a young boy as he runs away to Coney Island. It’s not the same as Disney but it’s got an amusement park, and the way filmmakers Ray Ashley, Morris Engel, and Ruth Orkin shot it, with a portable camera on the fly, is like Baker’s iPhone cinematography in just that final shot. The movie also visually inspired the French New Wave, particularly Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, which is another film worthy of recommendation after you see The Florida Project.

Because Little Fugitive was shot mostly covertly without people realizing, leading bystanders around Coney Island to become unwitting extras, it also relates to Randy Moore’s Escape from Tomorrow, the 2013 movie that wowed Sundance with its unapproved use of the Magic Kingdom and Disneyland as not just a setting but as a secret shooting location. Baker has discussed the final moment of The Florida Project in connection with Escape from Tomorrow (which he never watched) and how there was never the same concern about Disney suing them but that his production consulted the same lawyers Moore’s did.

 

Killer of Sheep (1978)

Plenty of critics have referenced Charles Burnett’s legendary thesis film, Killer of Sheep, in their write-ups on The Florida Project. More surprising is the fact that it’s also cited in at least one review of Baker’s Tangerine, as well. But Baker is unsurprisingly a fan of Killer of Sheep. He recently included it in a list of five favorite neorealist films, alongside such obvious picks as Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thieves and Umberto D. 

He even got to take part in the presentation of Burnett’s honorary Oscar at last year’s Governor’s Awards, as seen here:

The article Watch ‘The Florida Project,’ Then Watch These Movies appeared first on Film School Rejects.