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

Movies 1903 - 1904

Originally posted to Facebook on 1/16/2016

Friday night we watched films from 1903 and 1904.

Life of an American Fireman
The Great Train Robbery
Alice in Wonderland
Fairyland: A Kingdom of Fairies
An Interesting Story
The Mermaid
The Living Playing Cards
The Voyage Across the Impossible

I believe we have now reached peak Méliès, with five films last week, and four this week, but decreasing numbers in the weeks ahead. In a way this is too bad, because so far his films have been the most consistently entertaining and professional. But it also became clear that he had a certain stage-bound style, though of course the sets changed much more rapidly than on a stage, and he also deploys a certain repertoire of camera tricks. But, by contrast, the other four films we saw this week all have scenes shot outside, and in many cases scenes that are shot at an angle to the action. The Great Train Robbery even had shots from the top of a moving train. We also saw our first title cards in Alice in Wonderland, but they still do not appear to be very common. Most of the films this week, excepting only The Mermaid and The Living Playing Cards, had a connected multi-scene narrative, and the number of scenes per film is continuing to grow from previous weeks. Life of an American Fireman had an interesting pair of sequences, the first of which was a fireman rescuing a woman and a small child from the interior of a burning house, followed by a sequence showing the exact same set of actions from the outside -- including the fireman climbing up and down a ladder. (The firetrucks were all pulled by horses, by the way, which the kids found striking.) The Voyage Across the Impossible was a full twenty minutes, the longest film we've seen to date, and, looking ahead, the longest we'll see for several more weeks. It irritatingly had narration on the audio track, which we finally muted. (Ben was more irritated than me. "This is vandalism!" he said.) A Kingdom of Fairies was almost as long, at sixteen minutes. Overall, the total length of all eight films was 75 minutes this week, compared to 53 last week, and even less on previous weeks.

Next week we move on to 1905 and 1906. The link to our viewing plan is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT

Movies 1901 - 1902

Originally posted to Facebook 1/9/2016

This week we moved into the twentieth century, covering four films each from 1901 and 1902. They were:

The Devil and the Statue
The Man with the Rubber Head
Bluebeard
History of a Crime
Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show
Gulliver's Travels
Jack and the Beanstalk
A Trip to the Moon

At this point we seem to be an an "all Méliès, all the time" mode, and will be for several more weeks. Five of the eight films were from Méliès this week. The new special effect since last week appears to be double exposures that show people at different sizes. This is used in The Devil and the Statue, The Man with the Rubber Head, and Gulliver's Travels. In the first two it actually shows people shrinking and growing. Five of the eight had multiple sets and what I would consider a connected storyline, as compared to only two of eight from last week. Ben said at one point during Bluebeard, "People must have been better at understanding movies in those days, because I have no idea what is going on right now." This was during a period when Bluebeard and someone at a royal court were angrily gesturing at one another. I have not seen a title card as yet -- I assume that will be coming soon -- but one thing I've noticed is that many of the films, particularly the longer ones, seem to rely upon stories that are already well known, which aids comprehension. Gulliver's Travels and Jack and the Beanstalk definitely draw upon common knowledge, and Ben and Alli were both familiar with the story of Bluebeard as well -- more so that I was -- and they were a little more braced for the macabre site of Bluebeard's new wife discovering the room where his old wives' surprisingly fresh looking corpses were hanging from the ceiling.

At fifteen minutes, A Trip to the Moon was a full five minutes longer than any other film we've seen to date. The particular print we saw had the 1902 hand-coloring restored throughout, but had a score that was distractingly modern. Also, it did not seem to be entirely committed to scientific accuracy, nor did there seem to be any embryonic concept of the Prime Directive brewing in 1902. But I can't really criticize a movie where old men fight moon creatures with umbrellas.

Next week we'll move on 1903 and 1904, including The Great Train Robbery, maybe the second most iconic film from this period. The link to the viewing plan is: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT