6:30 p.m.	Chafed Elbows Robert Downey Sr. (U.S., 1967)

Touted as “the Lenny Bruce of the new cinema,” Robert Downey overwhelmed the underground with a clenched fistful of brilliant satires, culminating in Putney Swope and his pet project, Pound. With Chafed Elbows, Downey is at the peak of his iconoclastic powers. Nothing is safe: not Warhol, not psychiatry, not “Jesus Mekas,” not contempo poetry. In the midst of the mockery, Walter Dinsmore (George Morgan, a method actor without the meth) is having a taboo time with his mom, played by Downey’s former wife Elsie. When he’s not wooing Mother or one of her many alternate manifestations (all Elsie), Walter gives birth to some loose change; participates in an underground film; becomes a work of art (“I call you ‘Man on Street Near Warehouse’”); leads a band, Walter and His Vacuums, singing “Hey, Hey, Hey, In Your Black Leather Negligee”; and generally succumbs to his “annual November breakdown.” A wiggy web of still images, text, and live-action sequences, Chafed Elbows can’t be kept at arm’s length.

—Steve Seid

• Written by Downey. Photographed by William Waering, Stan Warnow. With George Morgan, Elsie Downey, Lawrence Wolf, Tom O’Horgan. (63 mins, B&W/Color, 35mm, From Anthology Film Archives. Chafed Elbows was preserved by Anthology Film Archives with funding provided by The Film Foundation.)

Preceded by short:
Oh Dem Watermelons (Robert Nelson, U.S., 1965). West Coast satire at its best, complete with the S.F. Mime Troupe, irreverent swipes at black cultural clichés, and a propulsive score by Steve Reich. (11 mins, Color, 16mm, PFA Collection)

• (Total running time: 74 mins)