Quicker'n a Wink (1940) Poster

(1940)

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6/10
How slow motion allows us to see moments the eye cannot detect...
Doylenf6 February 2010
Harold E. Edgarton invented a stroboscopic camera that allows us to see such things as the moment of impact when a football is kicked, a bullet as it shatters an electric light, a cat lapping milk with its tongue forked downward and curled below to scoop up the milk, a dentist drilling a tooth as bits of enamel fly around, and a man driving a golf ball through a telephone book.

This Pete Smith Specialty is one of their more serious attempts to enlighten us on how things really happen but escape detection from the human eye.

What I missed was seeing Dave O'Brien doing his physical pratfalls and assorted acrobatics, so this was of minor interest to me.
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6/10
The comedy makes it work
Horst_In_Translation10 March 2016
Warning: Spoilers
"Quicker'n a Wink" is a 9-minute black-and-white Oscar-winning documentary from 1940, over 75 years ago. For Pete Smith, it was the second and final Academy Award and looking at how many times he was nominated between 1935 and 1951, this is almost a bit disappointing. But this film here is not and this is basically almost exclusively thanks to the writing and narration. I did not really care at all about the contents here, but people who are into photography may have a great time watching this. For me, the heart and should of this pretty short film was the comedy. Really hilarious at times and it was great fun to listen to Smith and how he did not take himself or this film seriously at all. A pretty solid watch. Not sure if Oscar-worthy, but certainly worth checking out. Thumbd up.
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7/10
Quicker'n a wink
Magenta_Bob2 August 2013
Nice little vintage short that comes with one of the Marx Brothers boxes, and shows a series of experiments using stroboscopic photography (the technique that "puts the super in super speed photography"). It was probably cooler in 1940 than in 2013 – you can really tell how impressed the narrator, who is quite dry despite the increasingly desperate attempts at cracking jokes, assumes the audience to be – but even now it's pretty fun to watch things like a woman bursting a bubble with a needle in slow motion.

There's a lot of milk in this for some reason; there's a cat lapping milk, there's milk dripping on a plate, and there's a scene where they drop a cup of milk onto the floor. All in all it's the best I've seen from Sidney and clocking in somewhere around 10 minutes it never gets boring but still, it's probably primarily good for one viewing as the novelty wears off quite fast and there is only so much lactose a person can take.
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Nice Short
Michael_Elliott24 February 2009
Quicker 'n a Wink (1940)

*** (out of 4)

Oscar-winning Pete Smith short introduces us to Dr. Harold E. Edgerton who helped develop stroboscopic photography, which gives us the ability to use slow motion to see something that would otherwise be too fast to be seen. This is yet another winning short from director Sidney who made quite a few of them before turning to features. This movie is certainly one of the more entertaining ones from Smith who adds his typical fun narration. We see various objects including a hummingbird, a lightbulb being shot, a bubble being popped, a cat drinking milk and others. All of these are rather entertaining like how a cat actually drinks and many of them, like the bubble, are very funny. Another nice sequence was a kicker kicking a football.
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7/10
Quicker'n a Wink was quite an entertaining short about the use of slow-motion
tavm8 June 2015
Just watched this Pete Smith Specialty short on the Go West/The Big Store DVD. Directed by George Sidney, we see lots of slow motion scenes of milk being hit with the liquid going up and down, a bubble being burst, a light bulb getting shattered, etc. Smith has some humorous comments during many of what I mentioned. Audiences of the time must have been truly impressed since this was before TV pervaded the public imagination and the slow-motion instant replay in live sports events were in constant use. There are supposed to be ten lines written on this site before this review can be submitted but I really can't think of anything else to say. Well, except I highly recommend Quicker'n a Wink.
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10/10
"Office fans are so silent they no longer disturb sleeping employees."
boblipton1 March 2020
A Smith called Pete talks a lot while we look at high-speed motion pictures. In cooperation with scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, we get to look at a bunch of things we rarely get to see: a pencil popping a balloon, a hummingbird's wings as it flies, a bullet fired at a light bulb... and see that things happening at such speeds are not as we usually imagine them.

These specialized cameras, Pete informs the audience, can record images at up to 1,500 times the normal speed. It was impressive enough to win an Oscar. Although this sort of effect has become much more accessible, the novelty of this short has diminished, even though it's still a lot of fun.
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8/10
Anyone living on a dairy farm . . .
oscaralbert16 July 2015
Warning: Spoilers
. . . or harboring a milk fetish will find QUICKER 'N A WINK right up their alley. Though QUICKER ostensibly is a nine-minute documentary short about high-speed photography, it seems that udder juice is the main medium for this (then) new art form. QUICKER treats the viewer to milky crowns, milky geysers, and milky mayhem resulting from purposely broken cups full of milk. It's all enough to make Elsie cry. Commentator Pete Smith notes that the milkman must be happy about all the milk spilled at "thirteen cents a quart." If my math is correct, that works out to 52 cents per gallon, before the likely quantity discount is applied. At a price like that, who wouldn't have milk to burn? In keeping with its mostly dairy theme, QUICKER reveals that cats lap milk down--not up! Though the postman always rings twice, the milkman just presses the button once--which was not often enough for the last man "Stroboscoped" here. He didn't get ENOUGH milk; we see a close-up of his teeth being drilled in slow motion as a result of his calcium deficit. So it's time for YOU to answer the key question being raised here: Got Milk???
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