Lovers and Lollipops (1956, dir. Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin)
Every frame of this film is gorgeous. Even in my cruddy oblique, cropped screenshots you can see that. The placement of the camera and the performance of the juvenile lead Cathy Dunn as Peggy are frequently astonishing. Her single mother's fits-and-starts romance feels equally real. And the damn thing is a documentary of a specific moment in New York history, too. I finally watched Lovers and Lollipops on its last day on the Criterion channel and couldn't stop kicking myself. See, I still remember when we got all three of Engel and Orkin's feature films--Lollipops, The Little Fugitive, and Weddings and Babies--at the video store. On VHS. Why did I waste so many years of my life in a Lollipop-less state?
