Tag: Early Film
Yes, right here! I hit the jackpot this past weekend, and of course I’m sharing the wealth with you. Here’s the story….
Here’s an imaginative 4-minute film from 1905 by James Williamson about a man who gets so wrapped up in the book he’s reading that he is oblivious to the world around him. (Yes, had I known about it a month ago I would have included it in this post about the “oblivious gag.”) YouTuber changebeforegoing labels this “the first slapstick movie.” I would argue the point, but of course it all depends on how you define slapstick.
Here’s an oddity, a Thomas Edison film from 1901 featuring an enthusiastically received striptease on the solo trapeze. True, she finishes with more skin still covered than most of today’s acts start with, but I suspect it was still pretty risqué at the time.
If I’ve convinced you in my recent posts that Max Linder is worth knowing about, then you might want to read more, no? But when it comes to books (you remember books) there’s still nothing in English devoted entirely to Linder, and the two books in French are both by his daughter, Maud Linder. Luckily, they’re excellent and it would be great to see them translated into English.
Here’s a curiosity for you from 1909, years before the Keystone Cops and then Arbuckle, Chaplin, Keaton, et. al. ushered us into the heyday of silent film comedy. Produced by Pathé in France under the title Pickpock ne Craint pas les Entraves (pickpockets fear no barriers), it was released in the U.S. under the title Slippery Jim, with English inter-titles.
The hardest act I ever had to follow, bar none, was the boxing kangaroo on the Hubert Castle Circus. Here’s Woody Allen battling a kangaroo when he was playing ringmaster at the Hippodrome in 1966.
This one has recently surfaced on Facebook and YouTube, but probably most of you haven’t seen it yet, so let’s add it to my early film collection, complete with all the background info.
First Prize for Cello
produced by Pathé in 1907
Length: 2:43
from Europa Film Treasures
If the name Georges Méliès rings a bell at all, it probably makes you think of that wacky Trip to the Moon movie from the Dawn of Film that was okay in its time, but… that time was long ago. Yes, Méliès almost single-handedly invented special effects, pioneering such techniques as stop-action substitution, dissolves, multiple exposures, and time-lapse photography, in the process creating the science-fiction film genre, but nowadays his corny sense of humor, flimsy storytelling, and overuse of the same gimmicks make the work seem dated. In fact, it was out of fashion by the time the Keystone Cops came on the scene in 1912
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Workshops & Other Events
My first book (1976)
My book Clowns has long been out of print, but you can borrow it for two weeks at a time from the Internet Archive. More information is available here.
My second book (2015)
Visual and verbal humor for the cognitively and artistically curious! Available here.
“A book to treasure!”
—Bill Irwin