Trailer
Plot summary
Joey Norton is seven and lives with his mother and his twelve-year-old brother Lennie in a Brooklyn apartment. All summer Lennie watches him while their mother works, and he minds it. On Lennie's birthday he gets a harmonica and money for a trip to Coney Island with his friends Harry and Charlie. Their grandmother falls ill, their mother leaves to care for her, and Lennie is told to stay home with Joey instead. Harry brings his father's rifle to an empty lot, and when Joey's turn comes to fire it, Lennie smears ketchup on his shirt and falls down as if hit. The older boys tell Joey to hide and say they will call the police in an hour. Joey takes the grocery money and leaves.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Little Fugitive (1953)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- François Truffaut was inspired by Little Fugitive's spontaneous production style when he made The 400 Blows (1959), and later said the French New Wave would never have existed without Morris Engel showing them the way to independent production.
- Morris Engel shot the film with a concealed strap-on camera he built, letting him work without a tripod or a large crew and use thousands of Coney Island beach-goers as extras who never knew they were in the movie.
- Engel's camera, designed with his friend, the inventor and fellow World War II combat photographer Charlie Woodruff, is seen as a prototype for the Steadicam, and Stanley Kubrick and Jean-Luc Godard reportedly wanted to borrow it.
