1906: Dream of a Rarebit Fiend

Dream of a Rarebit Fiend

I passed on Edwin S Porter's landmark 1903 film "The Great Train Robbery" to focus on the more visceral "Desperate Poaching Affray", but just so his fans aren't too upset, here's his 1906 film "Dream of a Rarebit Fiend", based on one of a series of comic strips by the great Winsor McCay.

A man overindulges in a restaurant, then staggers home, stopping to cling to a lamp post as the streets spin around him. He gets into bed, then the furniture comes to life and leaves the room. After he goes to sleep, little demons stand on his headboard and torment him with pitchforks, then the bed lifts off the floors, spins round wildly and flies out of the window and over the city. Finally he finally he falls out of the flying bed, gets caught on a weathervane, then falls again, through the ceiling of his room and back into bed, where he wakes up.    

The film is full of ingenious photographic effects that aren't too obvious in their execution even today. Not to me anyway. I was trying to see whether he's really hanging from that flimsy-looking weathervane via a hidden harness, or if there are wires supporting him from offscreen - I think there are, in which case it's quite a feat not to get them tangled up as the vane rotates several times as he hangs from it.

We're getting to the end of an era here - one where trick effects are still expected to hold an andience's attention without much added in the way of characters or story - but this goes the extra mile, adding a few new tricks of its own, and is still fun to watch today.

It's hard to find good copies of many of these early films online but the one I've linked to here with a soundtrack by The Carport Theatre is the best I've found.      

1905: Rescued by Rover

Rescued by Rover

Here's the prolific Cecil Hepworth again with one of the iconic films of the age, "Rescued by Rover". A simple story but impressively executed - ingeniously so in fact.
It's very much a family production. A nanny, out walking the baby (played by Hepworth's son), gets distracted by a handsome soldier, while an old beggar woman, bitter about being turned away a moment earlier, steals the baby from the pram and takes it back to her hovel ( a run-down terraced house in Walton-on-Thames that probably last sold for about half a million if it's still there).
The nanny gets home and tearfully confesses to the mother (Mrs Hepworth). The dog (Hepworth's dog, Blair) eavesdrops, runs off to track down the baby, and having done that reports back to the distraught father (Hepworth) and somehow gets the message across to him. Father chases dog back to the hovel, father retrieves baby, happy reunion scene.
It's obvious enough to us that the dog would have been carefully trained to do each shot in turn, but a contemporary audience - even fully aware that they were watching a fiction - would probably have been hugely impressed by the dog apparently racing right across town and checking a whole row of cottages till he found the baby. Apparently, in reality, sausages helped.
The film was so popular the negative wore out from repeated reprinting, and it had to be re-filmed twice. One of the versions on YouTube seems to be one of the remakes. In that version, the dog seems to be momentarily confused about which scene he's playing when, reaching the river, instead of immediately swimming across, he sits for a moment in the boat as he's supposed to do later when leading the father to the baby.
Of course this is the prototype for all the clever-animal series that were popular throughout the 20th Century - Lassie, Champion the Wonder Horse, and Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.

1904: Opening of the Drill Hall, Accrington, by General Baden-Powell

Opening of the Drill Hall, Accrington, by General Baden-Powell



OK - I admit it. I only did this film because of the catchy title. In terms of innovation or cinematic technique it has nothing to offer, but I mention it here because it's an example of a type of film-making I haven't touched on yet.
The Mitchell and Kenyon film company was active in the North of England from 1897 to about 1920, and specialised in making documentary films of local events, making sure to include as many faces as possible, then develop the films the same day and screen them at a local venue in the evening, hopefully making a profit from the sale of tickets. (One of their slogans was "Local films for local people".) Mitchell and Kenyon suddenly became famous again a hundred years later, after their film archive was rediscovered, long forgotten, in the basement of a shop in Blackburn, and subsequently restored by the British Film Institute.
This film is a fairly typical example. All the film makers have done is set up the camera in a prominent position and turned the handle. It's a living.
To a modern viewer, it's a glimpse into a long gone world in which everyone wore hats and the presence of a movie camera was a big event.
Even if you're from Accrington, you're hardly likely to recognise anyone, but watch out for a cameo from the bloke who drives the fire engine in "Trumpton".
     

1903: Desperate Poaching Affray

Desperate Poaching Affray


I'm spoilt for choice this year - 1903 gives us a whole bunch of groundbreaking early films including Edwin S. Porter's "The Great Train Robbery", credited with creating much of the grammar of film narrative and editing, the Sheffield Photographic Company's "Daring Daylight Burglary", equally inventive and a few months older, George A Smith's  "Mary Jane's Mishap", in which the director's wife plays a ditzy housemaid and gets spectacularly blown up the chimney when trying to light the stove with paraffin, and Cecil Hepworth's "Alice in Wonderland", longest British film of its time at around 10 minutes.
The one I've picked, though, is William Haggar's "Desperate Poaching Affray". Perhaps I like this film because it's a lot like films I made as a teenager, but with a cast of more than three, who are less afraid of getting hurt.
Essentially it's a simple chase film in which two poachers are caught in the act and pursued through woods, fields and ponds by several policemen and (presumably) gamekeepers. The poachers shoot at the gamekeepers, the gamekeepers shoot at the poachers (never mind that the policemen are in the way), all of them get into a big fight first in the woods, then in the middle of a pond, before the poachers are captured and led off - all for the sake of a pheasant or two, presumably.
What makes this film stand out is the wholeheartedness with which the performers throw themselves into the action - often literally. The fighting is convincing and dynamic, even when the performers are waist-deep in muddy water.  None of the theatricals or over-emphasised gestures of "Scrooge" or the Melies films, these guys are doing it like they mean it.    

1902: A Trip to the Moon

A Trip to the Moon

I don't know what I can add to the volumes that have been written about this, Georges Melies' most famous film and probably the first great science fiction film, except that it's a shame so many great film-makers of this period fell on hard times later. Melies, as you'll know if you've seen the excellent 'Hugo', ended up running a toy stall in a Paris railway station. If only they had known that their work wasn't, in the end, as ephemeral as it seemed at the time.
This film has recently seen a brilliant and painstaking new restoration by Serge Bromberg's Lobster Films, created from a badly decayed hand-coloured print that technology has only been able to rescue in the last few years.  Until recently you could find the Park Circus DVD of that version in Fopp for as little as £3 but some dealers on Amazon are now asking up to £150. Never mind, though, it's on YouTube in full HD - for the moment. (I've linked to one that's less likely to be removed.)
The style of acting and photography hasn't really moved on yet, but Melies' stop-camera effects become ever more effective, as the moon creatures who chase the heroes back to their ship vanish in puffs of smoke when hit with umbrellas - hardly an effective survival mechanism, you'd have thought, but certainly spectacular.
Aside from the presence of breathable air and humanoid life on the Moon, one huge difference in the perception of the space-travel business in 1901 versus later years is that in those days it seems to  be so far removed from reality that it falls into the province of wizards and mystics, since the film opens with a meeting of pointy-hatted, robed gentlemen discussing the project with the aid of a blackboard.
On the other hand, the space capsule, remarkable similar to a Gemini or Apollo craft, splashes down in the sea and is retrieved by the Navy.        

1901: Scrooge, or Marley's Ghost

Scrooge, or Marley's Ghost

Or even "A Christmas Carol". We're starting to get into serious attempts at story-telling now, though sadly only three and a half minutes of this 11-minute epic survive. It's included on the BFI DVD, "Dickens Before Sound".
It's early days, so what passes for screen drama involves a locked-off camera pointed at a painted backdrop, with a company of actors mugging and gesticulating as if their myopic grannies were sitting right at the back of the cinema -it's not even acting so much as a catalogue of theatrical shorthand.
Technically, it's already conventional in comparison to Melies, with double-exposure effects telegraphed in advance by the presence of, say, a broad black curtain for the double-exposed characters to show up against. Nevertheless, though, it no doubt did the job for audiences of the time. It relies on knowledge of the story to communicate its full meaning, but since we still make films today for people who have already read the book we can't fault it for that, and its worth saluting just for pushing the boundaries and trying to get people to sit still through 11 minutes of film - something that seems to be more of a challenge now with each passing year.
 

 

1900: Explosion of a Motor Car

Explosion of a Motor Car

Ok, it would be a shame to give up on this without at least making it into the 20th century, so here's a fun little film from Walton on Thames's own Cecil Hepworth, soon to become one of Britain's most famous and prolific film makers.
Motor cars were just as new and as much a curiosity as moving pictures in 1900, and must have seemed a little ridiculous to some - a rich people's plaything, less practical than a horse, more dangerous and much more expensive - so when a car full of bright young things comes chugging down the road, its occupants cheerfully waving their hankies as working men go about their business, it must have raised a huge laugh in the cinema when the car explodes, blowing its occupants sky-high.
A passing policeman witnesses the incident and calmly notes it all down as body parts land around him.
The trick photography is simple but effective - just a few frames after a puff of smoke is released from the car, the camera is stopped and the car substituted for a pile of wreckage.
The playful tone of the film is again interesting - on one level it's a simple sight gag but one wonders if Hepworth was playing to his audience, and counting on a good response from punters of limited means, many of whom would have been hard-working servants to exactly the sort of people who get their come-uppance here.