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Aloysious Christopher Parker (Chris Parker), 16 years old and as skinny as a bean, calls himself Allie in the signatures he occasionally spray-paints on the walls of buildings in downtown Manhattan. Allie is not a serious graffiti artist. Mostly he just drifts around, allowing things to happen.

One day he's lounging against a sidewalk post box, smoking and thinking, when two youngish women drive up in an open convertible. The driver leaps out to do an errand, leaving the motor running. Her friend asks Allie to put a letter in the post box. Allie says, ''Do I look like a mailman?''

While the woman is posting the letter herself, Allie moves around to the other side of the car, gets in and drives off.

In the next scene of ''Permanent Vacation,'' Jim Jarmusch's first feature, made in 1980, Allie is selling the car for $800.

This sort of chance encounter, leading to an unpremeditated scam, is only a small part of ''Permanent Vacation,'' but it was to become an essential aspect of each of the Jarmusch films that followed: ''Stranger Than Paradise'' (1984), ''Down by Law'' (1986) and ''Mystery Train'' (1989).

''Permanent Vacation,'' which has been available for some years on videocassette, opens today at Anthology Film Archives, where it is being shown in a 35-millimeter blow-up of the 16-millimeter original.

It's a must-see for anyone who shares the belief that Mr. Jarmusch is the most arresting and original American film maker to come out of the 1980's.

''Permanent Vacation'' was made for something in the neighborhood of $12,000. It is not an unrecognized masterpiece, but it is clearly the forerunner of the eccentric comedies to come.

In Mr. Jarmusch's work, Aloysious Christopher Parker occupies the place that Stephen Dedalus holds in the work of James Joyce. Allie represents something of the film maker's sensibility, or something of what Mr. Jarmusch may sometimes see as his sensibility. It's necessary to be vague about such things since Mr. Jarmusch, after making ''Permanent Vacation,'' has kept his distance from his characters.

Allie talks a lot throughout the film, and though Mr. Jarmusch finds him funny, he would also seem to agree with Allie's assessment of the world, which is gloomy. Allie may be right, but he's also very naive, some of which rubs off on the film itself. The landscape Allie inhabits is one of blind alleys, rubble-filled urban lots and abandoned buildings, not much different, really, from that of the Memphis that Mr. Jarmusch pictures in ''Mystery Train.'' The people Allie meets in the course of his wandering include his schizophrenic mother, a possibly psychotic war veteran, and a junkie who talks about the Doppler Effect and recalls the sad life story of Charlie Parker.

There are also others: a hysterical Spanish-speaking young woman and a street musician (played by John Lurie, one of the principal players of ''Stranger Than Paradise'').

In later films Mr. Jarmusch demonstrates a singular gift for the kind of narrative that, without the audience's awareness, builds to an inevitable pay-off. There are no such surprises in ''Permanent Vacation.'' Instead, there is a quantity of raw material that would later be refined into three of the funniest, wisest comedies of the last decade.

Permanent Vacation
Directed, written and edited by Jim Jarmusch; cinematographer, Thomas DiCillo; music by Mr. Jarmusch and John Lurie; produced by Cinesthesia. At the Anthology Film Archives, Second Avenue at Second Street. Running time: 80 minutes. This film has no rating.

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