Little Stabs at Happiness (1963)

• 49%
• 1963
• Ken Jacobs

A film in four parts. In "In the Room", a man and a woman in outlandish garb are sitting in a claw-foot bathtub smoking, while the man abuses a doll in various ways. In "They Stopped to Think", the filmmaker focuses on a woman trying to position a stool upon which to sit next to a wall. The filmmaker, in voice over, talks about filming the scene, and his current relationship with the people shown in the film, who were his friends at the time of filming and who are now largely out of his life. The scene shifts to a pier where a man and woman are filmed, they playing to the camera. In "It Began to Drizzle", a man and woman are lounging in a street side outdoor patio. They have to decide what to do. The scene then shifts to a man and some children doing chalk drawings on the sidewalk, and how other respond to what they are doing. In "The Spirit of Listlessness (Jack Smith)", a man lounging on an urban rooftop is playing with balloons while he plays to the camera with other items around him.