Film of the Year

1899: Shakespeare in Death

King John (1899)
Directed by William Kennedy, Laurie Dickson and Walter Pfeffer Dando
1 min. 18 sec.; Great Britain; Black and White; Silent

I’ve enjoyed many of the attempts bold filmmakers have made to interpret the poetry of Shakespeare for the screen. Some are comendable mostly for their visual efforts (Zefferelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968)) and others for their obvious understanding of the Bard’s work (Kenneth Branagh’s handling of the material for instance). Until now, I have never witnessed a silent film version of a Shakespeare work. I must admit that I have a hard time getting my mind around the concept. How can a filmmaker even hope to take this largely verbal experience, strip it of its defining characteristic, and hope to present a purely visual telling of some of the most sophisticated language ever? Can it be done? Should it be done?

The answers are "yes" and "maybe not." At least not with the techniques used by directors Kennedy, Dickson and Dando (why three directors for 70+ seconds of film?). British Mutoscope and Biograph Company’s King John attempts to recreate the death scene at the end of the play of the same name. At just over a minute the film has to squeeze in a lot into a short time. Unfortunately what it squeezes in is hardly worth watching. Visually, King John is a disappointment. The scene is shot from a direct level angle against a flat painted backdrop robbing almost all sense of three-dimensional space from the image. Why? The Lumiere’s were experimenting with angles to aid the illusion of depth since 1895, and Edison and others were creating sets or moving outdoors for similar effect. As for the scene itself, if I already knew the play intimately, and if I knew King John’s death scene dialogue by heart, and if I was able to render the memory of that dialogue in the proper Shakespearean cadence then the film might speak to me. As it stands, the film is merely 78 seconds of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, in what looks to be a dress, writhing around on a throne while making eggagerated gestures. There is no sense of poetry, no pathos, I’m not even sure if King John dies at the end (perhaps not all of the film remains). Moreover, without the title, or foreknowledge of the play, I wouldn't have been able to figure out that the film is supposed to represent Shakespeare. Intertitles would have helped because at least we could have read the dialogue, but they weren’t invented until 1903. Any fan of Shakespeare at British Mutoscope and Biograph Co. might have at least tried something like intertitles four years earlier. How else are we able to experience the Bard's work in the silent format?

Silent film historians may glean something from King John, but fans of Shakespeare on film, perhaps searching for a long lost silent treasure, should look elsewhere. King John will only leave you convinced that bringing Shakespeare to the screen, while a noble idea, was far too great a challenge for early silent cinema.

Film of the Year is written by Thom Ryan.
© 2006 Thom Ryan. Some rights reserved.

1898: Film Blurring the Line Between Fantasy & Reality - Why We Fight

Shooting Captured Insurgents (1898)
Filmmaker: William Heise
25 sec.; U.S.A.; Black and White; Silent.

I felt a bit nauseous watching Shooting Captured Insurgents because I thought it was an actual snuff film. The poor quality of the image, proto-Direct Cinema style, and quick cut to black add an underground feel to the thing. In a longshot, an officer leads a group of soldiers and their prisoners out of the forest to stand before a wall. The soldiers line the prisoners up, take a step back, and at the officer’s signal fire a volley into them. It was with relief that I learned that the piece is actually a staged scene. However, when I discovered why the film was made I felt ill all over again.

The big news in early 1898 wasn’t cinema, but the Cuban Rebellion. After centuries of tyranny by Spain the colony rose in revolt pleading the United States to intervene. In February, the U.S. sent a warship,The Maine, into Havana harbor as a show of strength. When it exploded and a cursory U.S. investigation pinned the blame on a Spanish mine (Spain’s investigation revealed the explosion came from inside the ship), the U.S. declared war on April 25 . It was with outpourings of enthusiasm and nationalism that many Americans greeted the news. Suddenly cinema, which had lost some of its novel appeal, was in a position to cash in by bringing a foreign war home to movie screens. The Spanish-American War was the first U.S. conflict documented by motion pictures. Edison, Biograph and other film companies released films that showed military preparations and troops embarking for Cuba. When the public grew weary of actualities of warships, cavalry exercises and the like, these film companies staged scenes of battles and alleged Spanish atrocities. Shooting Captured Insurgents is one of these films.

By the time Shooting Captured Insurgents was screened in August the “splendid little war” was already over; the U.S. was victorious. As a result, the film serves to justifiy U.S. intervention by creating an imaginary scenario in which enemy soldiers savagely execute helpless prisoners (the Library of Congress labels Shooting Captured Insurgents a "reenactment," but it doesn't cite any specific event or who was involved). This film, and others like it, may have convinced viewers in 1898 (and even today) that going to war with Spain was the right thing to do. More importantly, the film stands to prove that the potential of cinema as a form of political propaganda was realized from nearly the advent of the artform.

Film of the Year is written by Thom Ryan.
© 2006 Thom Ryan. Some rights reserved.

1897: The Riddle of Lumiere's Sphinx

The Pyramids (1897)
50 sec.; France; Black and White; Silent

Cinema does not capture reality but merely presents us with an illusion that represents reality. The best films use this illusion to transport our minds to another place, time, or even condition. The Lumiere Brothers' 1897 film, The Pyramids, has this power.

The 50 second actuality consists of a single high contrast shot that is most notable for the framing (I haven't been able to track down the camera operator, was it Gabriel Veyre?)—somehow it encompasses the pyramids, the Sphinx, and men riding camels in the same frame. When looking at the film today it's hard to imagine how this image could attract an audience. We're no strangers to these images because they're so accessible to us. Turn on The History Channel for five minutes and it's likely that you will see a shot of the pyramids or the Sphinx. But, this film was shown around the world to audiences who have never seen them before. If I put myself in their shoes I'm reminded of how powerful images can be when we experience something for the first time; in a way I envy those people who saw The Pyramids in 1897 because the film doesn't have the same impact on my over-indulged eyes.

Another thing that strikes me while viewing the film is the ability of cinema to transport us across space to Egypt and time to 1897. We see the image and though we're aware that it's just an illusion we're nonetheless whisked away to the Egyptian desert over a hundred years ago. How does cinema's illusion of movement accomplish this?

Film of the Year is written by Thom Ryan.
© 2006 Thom Ryan. Some rights reserved.

1896: Edison Sells Sex to Great-Grandma

The Kiss (1896)
aka The John C. Rice - May Irwin Kiss
Filmmaker: William Heise
18 sec.; U.S.A.; Black and White; Silent

Few staples of cinema have had the long-lasting appeal of the big kiss. Slapstick, the chase, the pie-in-the-face gag, drawn out fistfights, shock tactics, etc., have all come, gone, come back and gone back again. But, the kiss, arguably the most durable action in the history of the movies, has never wavered from our screens. From the nervous pecks of the early cinema to the elaborate and prolonged kisses of Valentino or Garbo, from the moderated lip brushes of the Production Code-era (“no excessive or lustful kissing,” sayeth the Code) to the brusque muzzling of film noir, from the breath-holding extended face sucking of the 70s and 80s right up to those tongue battles we see on-screen today, the kiss has been a nearly constant presence in cinema. And why not? Those embraces make dramatic moments more dramatic, shocking scenes more shocking, sexy moments more sexy, and provide many a weak scene with a climax.

In 1896 the novelty of the motion picture was wearing off in the United States; the Lumiere Brothers’ Cinematographe and Thomas Edison’s Vitascope were competing for paying audiences. Little surprise then that Edison turned to sex as a means to beat the competition. In those days before television or the Internet, with the cinema still in its infancy, one popular attraction for entertainment was the theater. In 1896, one of the sexiest things happening in theater was The Widow Jones, a musical in which May Irwin and her costar John C. Rice shared a prolonged onstage kiss. As the Edison catalog later described it the couple's osculation “brought down the house everytime.” The mouth music was so outrageous that The New York World ran an article about it, complete with line drawings! Edision went a step further and filmed the lip wrestle for his Vitascope in April 1896.

The film simply consists of one shot of the pair getting ready to kiss and then doing the deed. The kiss in The Kiss is shown in a medium close-up (the first?) rather than in the long or medium shots of the Lumiere’s actualities or Edison’s own Kinetoscope films; the resulting feeling of closeness to the subjects gives the scene an intimacy unknown before in motion pictures. Though the action itself is clumsy and all too brief, the film opens up the possibility for intimacy to fuel cinema. All of those steamy onscreen couplings begin right here. Of course, movies have a long way to go before we’ll feel any heat coming off of the screen. I have to agree with those who complained at the time that the actors aren’t attractive enough to make us even want to watch them kissing. Nevertheless, The Kiss was the most popular Edison film of the year, and turned John C. Rice into a kissing star. The film apparently generated a storm of protests from church leaders and newspapers columnists. Why such a big controversy over a little smooching? It may seem quaint to us today that such a furor erupted over 18 seconds of snogging, but kissing in public wasn’t as socially acceptable in 1896 and no one had ever seen anyone kiss on the screen before. Besides, Madonna and Britney Spears swapping spit at the MTV Music Video Awards spurred similar controversy in 2003 and remains one of the most downloaded images on the Internet. It appears that the peck wields a mighty power to grab our attention and provoke a myriad of reactions even in these jaded times. Personally, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Long live the kiss!

Film of the Year is written by Thom Ryan.
© 2006 Thom Ryan. Some rights reserved.

1895: The First Film is a Remake

La Sortie des Usine Lumiere (“Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory”)
Directed by Louis Lumiere
46 sec, France, 1895, Black and White, Silent

To begin this new blog I've decided to start at the beginning by viewing the first film ever screened for a paying public audience. It is short. It is fuzzy. But it was first! Yet, as so often happens in the world of cinema, all is not as it seems because the first film is actually a remake.

In 1894 Antoine Lumiere, a manufacturer of photographic plates in Lyon, France, saw an exhibition of Thomas Edision’s Kinetoscope in Paris. He encouraged his sons August and Louis to improve on Edison’s idea and move motion pictures outside of the Kinetoscope box so that an audience could watch them together. In response, the brothers invented the cinematographe, a projection system that spawned the word cinema and allowed film to become a commercially viable business. Unlike other early cameras, the cinematographe was lightweight, it moved film via sprocket holes in the filmstrip, it could shoot motion pictures, develop the film, and serve as a projector as well.

The first film by the Lumieres, Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory, was made on March 19, 1895 and screened for a private audience three days later. On December 28 of that year, ten films were screened by the Lumieres (Lumiere means “light” in English, by the way) with the cinematographe for the first paying public motion picture audience in history at Grand Cafe in Paris. The show was a success and encouraged the Lumieres to send cameramen all over the world to make and screen more films. Among the motion pictures screened that December day was Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory.

So, how good is the first film an audience paid to see? The whole thing, which is only 46 seconds long (a dream come true for those we hear complaining about how long movies are), consists of just a single shot of...well, workers leaving the Lumiere’s photographic factory! In it we see a couple of filmmaking essentials. The angle of the shot helps to create the illusion of three dimensional space and there is enough depth of field to allow us to see the cobblestone street outside the factory, the people leaving from two doors, and silhouettes moving inside of the building. The general appeal of the film is the realistic portrayal of this working class crowd actually moving. Most of the workers are women dressed in long skirts, aprons, simple blouses and feathered hats (see photo above); the men wear suits and hats—people really dressed up to do factory work in those days! Adding interest, and a bit of comedy, to the scene is an unexpected sequence in which a dog chases a factory worker out of the building and upsets a man riding a bicycle. Although the Lumieres have taken pains to convince us that this scene represents reality, we can tell that it is actually staged. The people either rather obviously avoid looking at the camera or make simple pranks (one of the workers tugs on a friend’s skirt, for example. Why is it human nature to try to be funny once a camera is pointed at you?) as they pass in front of it. We can see that the dog is led outside of the factory and encouraged by a worker to disrupt the cyclist. Even at this embryonic stage the elements of surprise and realism in cinema attempt to convince us that what we’re viewing is a real event.

Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory also provides a bit of cinema controversy. The film was made not once but at least three times. We know that the version shown in December is not the same as that screened for the private audience previously in March because the earlier screening was described by a journalist as including horses. The version shown in December is the only of the three without a horse in it. Therefore, the first film viewed by a paying audience is actually a remake of a film shot and screened the previous Spring.

Film of the Year is written by Thom Ryan.
This essay © 2006 Thom Ryan. Some rights reserved.