Summary 1893-1909

Originally posted to Facebook on 2/27/2016

Ben, Alli, and I are ten weeks into our chronological movie viewing, watching four films a year for every year since 1898, and a few films prior. Because of the short running time of films in the earliest era we have already covered up through 1911. By the time we hit 1913 we will be watching true features, and so our progress will slow, and we won't hit 1920 until the fall.

I thought this was a good time to list some of the films that we enjoyed the most from the first decade of the twentieth century. The dominant figure during this period for us was Méliès, with D.W. Griffith starting to appear near the end. A few other groups or directors made multiple appearances as well, including the Edison corporation. Among Méliès' films, A Trip to the Moon (1902) lived up to its reputation. It wasn't the only Méliès film that had an extended narrative and multiple sets, but it was one of the earliest and most cohesive. Many of Méliès' films, however, were not in this vein. They took place mainly in a single set, and were basically showpieces for a variety of camera tricks. A late but polished example of this kind of film was The Devilish Tenant (1909). An early example was The Astronomer's Dream (1898).

Moving on from Méliès, but somewhat in the same vein, we liked Dream of A Rarebit Fiend (1906), directed by Edwin Porter for Edison. It was a little more broad and earthy, but had the same kind of parade-of-camera-tricks approach to its story. Another short but entertaining film was The Thieving Hand (1908) for Vitagraph.

A film closer in spirit to the longer narrative style of Melies was Aladdin and His Wonder Lamp (1906) directed by Albert Capellani for Pathe. It featured its own collection of visual effects, as well as the first camera pan that we've noticed.

Lastly, we liked The Sealed Room (1909) by D.W. Griffith. It is not the most representative of his films, in that it is more theatrical than normal, and is set indoors, but we enjoyed it.

All of these films are in the public domain, and are furthermore rather short, so they can all be watched on YouTube relatively easily. I've included the links below for anyone that is interested.

The Astronomer's Dream (1898)
A Trip to the Moon (1902)
Dream of A Rarebit Fiend (1906)
Aladdin and His Wonder Lamp (1906)
The Thieving Hand (1908)
The Devilish Tenant (1909)
The Sealed Room (1909)

Movies 1905 - 1906

Originally posted to Facebook on 1/25/2016

This week we we watched films from 1905 and 1906. The films were:

The Black Imp
The Kleptomaniac
The Nihilist
The Night Before Christmas
Dream of a Rarebit Fiend
Aladdin and His Wonder Lamp
The 400 Tricks of the Devil
The Story of the Kelly Gang

The length of the films continue to grow, and for that reason we split the viewing into two nights, watching the 1905 films on Friday, and the 1906 ones on Sunday. The films took a cumulative 84 minutes this week, compared to 75 minutes last week. We are well and truly on the Méliès downslope at this point. Only two films this week were his, while three were from Edwin Porter, at Edison. The main plot of both Méliès films (The Black Imp and The 400 Tricks of the Devil) involved supernatural forces tormenting people using the evil power of camera tricks. (This has been the plot of a lot of the Méliès films we've seen, and Alli even commented, "He uses the devil a lot.") The Black Imp was the only film this week less than five minutes, and the only film that had just a single set. The 400 Tricks of the Devil was, by contrast, quite long at 17 minutes, and involved many sets, and many things disappearing and re-appearing, and a weird flying skeletal horse, and a lot of other confusing craziness. As has happened a couple of times, there was a recently created audio narration on the DVD which might have explained more of what was going on had we not muted it.

Of the other films, Aladdin and His Wonder Lamp was quite Méliès-like, with lots of camera tricks and painted sets. It also appeared to have the first moving camera proper that we've seen, though it was just a shift from a set on the left to a set immediately adjacent to it, and then a shift back. It also had a coherent and recognizable plot, particularly to anyone who's seen the 1992 version of Aladdin several hundred times. Of the Edison films, the strangest was Dream of a Rarebit Fiend, which involved a fantastical drunken dream of the title character. Based on Wikipedia it was based on a bizarre contemporary comic strip which every week showed the disturbing dreams of someone who had eaten too much rarebit. (I believe I have only had rarebit once, and can report no memorable dreams as a result. But I suppose eating it only once does not qualify me as a fiend.)

The last film we watched was The Story of the Kelly Gang, an Australian film for which I could only find an Australian DVD, so we had to watch it downstairs on a region-free DVD player. It was 18 minutes long, but was apparently only a portion of one of the first truly feature length films, the majority of which has now been lost. The 18-minute version we saw seemed to tell a coherent enough story, though, so I'm not sure where the other forty minutes would have fit.

Next week we move on to 1907 and 1908. The link, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT