In another thread Walloon admitted modestly that he logged most of IMdB’s pre-1900 movie listings. This is a great site for actually viewing 19th- (and early 20th- ) century films. How many have you seen? What are your favorites, and why? I love the scenes of the Paris Exhibition of 1900 (OK, technically not a pre-1900 film, of course). All the street scenes, where actual folks just walkin’ down the street look into the cameras and right at you, smile, and walk off.
Prof. Welton’s Boxing Cats (1894) is pretty unforgettable, as is the grisly Sausage Machine (1895). 1896 was the first year films really started to take off: the “actuality scenes” of NYC are the most fascinating for me. Also the star vehicles: May Irwin’s Kiss, Eugen (hubba hubba!) Sandow. Also worth seeing: the energetic Bowery Waltz (1897), What Demoralized the Barber Shop (1898), Love in a Hammock (1899) is cute;
I wonder if She Wanted to be a Boy (1899) was a prequel to Boys Don’t Cry? I’d love to see Her First Corset (1897), Sexless Profiles (!) (1897), Giving the General a Taste of It (!!) (1898), and my favorite title, How Bridget Served the Salad Undressed (1898). And lord only knows what *Little Willie and the Minister *(1898) was about!!
Very cool! I had always remembered Ms Irwin and her swain as unattractively old but now I’ve got a good fifteen or twenty years on them and they look young. But he’s still smarmy as hell.
Drop, May Irwin and John C. Rice weren’t supposed to be Garbo and Gilbert–it was a comedy, and they were a comedy couple–think Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery.
I worked for a time in the nitrate vaults of the Library of Congress (in Dayton, OH on Wright-Patterson AFB), so I had firsthand exposure to the Edison paper prints as well as an abundance of other marvelous material (I was logging Paramount films, 1916-1932). I can’t even begin to estimate how many pre-1900s I’ve seen in one medium or another, though the number easily passes 100 on the big screen viewing a film print (video, etc. only puts the number much higher, natch). My computer’s not so hot, so I haven’t viewed much on the LOC site, though it’s a tremendous resource (I remember my Masters Thesis involved interviewing David Francis about the website, public domain films, and the use of digital technology in the LoC’s future).
Too many to single out from that era, I don’t think I’ve ever laughed harder than at Méliès’s Four Troublesome Heads, but the ones that entrance (and sadden) me the most are the ones where the camera’s set up on a street corner and the world simply passes by in front of you.
Also, I should point out that the second installment of the DVD box set Treasures from the American Film Archives comes out this September, with an emphasis on early American film. If you only buy one DVD set this fall, this should be it.
I know what you mean–I can still see that one young man in a straw boater . . . Can’t remember if it was a New York street scene or one of the Paris Exhibition “realities,” but this one pleasant-looking young man walked right by the camera, quite close up, smiled, nodded, touched his hat, and walked off into 1900. Wonder who he was, where he went?
Or the two young women on a windy day in New York, c1900, holding their skirts and hats, giggling hysterically, talking to each other, on their way–where? Lunch? Shopping? What were they laughing and talking about?
Take a look at this one, filmed in June 1900 in Paris: the plethora of wise-ass messenger boys trying to get into the picture, just like today (one of them is soundly pushed away, toward the end of the film). And who is the nice young man–halfway through the film–who hops up, grabs the pole, smiles winningly at us and tips his derby?
I’m quite fond of A Christmas Accident (1896). A charming little Christmas short, with some surprising effects. The IMDb lists it as 1912, but TCM presented it as 1896, which is fairly consistent with the quality AFAICT. It is available on Kino. I would definitely recommend Kino’s The Movies Begin. Awesome collection.
I actually find the Nice Hat-Tipping Guy to be pretty fascinating too. The fact that there was no sound back then adds to the charm, because you start to invent your own dialogue: “Say, feller, what is that cockamamie contraption? A moving-picture machine? Twenty-three skidoo!”
Two months later, same Fair . . . Another wise-ass messenger boy tries to get in the picture; three Frenchmen meet on the street: “Allo, Alphonse!” “Allo, Gaston!” And–I’ll be damned!–right at the end of the film, could it be our same nice hat-tipping gent walking by, in close-up?
It’s these mindless seasonal blockbusters that have killed kinematography. We need to get back to basics, and realise that it’s about more than flashy special effects.