Categories
This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

Various short films of waves breaking by the shore (1895-1902)

These waves have been crashing
on indistinguishable shores
for a billion years
and will
for four billion more

__________

Notes

1. I love waves.

2. And watching waves.

3. These waves are all over a hundred years old.

4. Lovely waves.

5. Anyway, there’s shots from ten different films here, all of which I watched on the BFI Player.

6. The first film, and the earliest, is Rough Sea At Dover, from 1895.

7. Which apparently fueled a boom in scenes of the sea.

8. For which I am forever grateful.

9. The second one is Breakers, from 1896.

10. It’s only 20 seconds long but it’s lovely.

11. With a good selection of hats.

12. Ship At Sea, from 1898, and Four Warships In Rough Seas (thought to be from 1897, but tagged 1900 on the BFI site) are two nice early examples of the pleasures of mouting a camera on a ship and letting the rise and fall of the sea around them induce seasickness in you from afar.

13. Also for some reason Four Warships In Rough Seas Sea contains at least six warships.

14. Presumably due to some sort of military misinformation campaign.

15. Sea Breaking Against Some Rocks (1898) and Rough Seas Breaking On Rocks (1899) are astonishingly atmospheric depictions of the scenes described by their titles.

16. Which is nice.

17. I love them both quite a lot.

18. And could watch them for hours rather than these scant minutes.

19. There then follows two films called Rough Sea, both from 1900.

20. Rough Sea #1 has a brick harbour wall in it.

21. And Rough Sea #2 does not.

22. If you absolutely need to differentiate between the two.

23. Mostly I included these ones for completions sake.

24. (I don’t know where the comma in completions sake should go so I’m leaving it out entirely)

25. Rough Sea At Roker (1901) is two minutes of not particular rough seas at all.

26. I’ve seen bigger waves at Clacton.

27. I’ve eeen bigger waves at Southend.

28. But it’s still strangely comforting to watch.

29. And the seas do look slightly rougher in the second minuter than the first.

30. I’ll give them that.

31. The final film is Waves At Southport, from 1902.

32. The first minute or so of this contains possibly the most sedate waves ever captured on film.

33. But the second half cuts to a cacophony of seagulls.

34. Seagulls being rougher than all the seas combined.

35. They’ll eat the flesh from your bones

36. And then the bones from your flesh

37. Until there’s nothing left for you to give.

38. I’m too scared to look at any more seas now.

39. So let this be the end

40. Of this little adventure.

__________

Film Information

Title: Rough Sea At Dover
Year: 1895
Director: Birt Acres
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Breakers
Year: 1896
Director: Henry William Short
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Ship At Sea
Year: 1898
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Four Warships On Rough Seas
Year:1897, or maybe 1900
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Sea Breaking Against Some Rocks
Year: 1898
Director: Charles Goodwin Norton
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Rough Seas Breaking On Rocks
Year: 1899
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Rough Sea
Year: 1900
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Rough Sea
Year: 1900
Director: James Bamforth
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Rough Sea At Roker
Year: 1901
Director: Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon
Duration: 2 minutes
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Waves At Southport
Year: 1902
Duration: 3 minutes
Watch: BFI Player

Categories
This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

The Haunted Hotel (1907) / Hôtel Électrique (1908)

The Haunted Hotel (which was directed by J. Stuart Blackton and released in 1907) and Hôtel Électrique (which was directed by Segundo de Chomón and released in 1908) are two variations on almost exactly the same theme (that theme being haunted hotels, where everything inside moves around in marvellous stop motion ways).

The Haunted Hotel mixes live action, stop motion (and pixilation) animation, as well as a bunch of other film trickery techniques, to create a series of short scenes where a weary traveller is haunted first by his dinner, then by a napkin, and finally by the entire room itself. It’s wonderful. Especially the end.

This is one of the oldest surviving stop motion films (some of the same director’s earlier attempts are among the many lost), but it’s not only remarkably technically adept, but pretty funny too (I laughed at least three times in six minutes, which is fairly good going I reckon).

The Haunted Hotel was so successful in Europe that apparently every film maker in France spent the next year trying to work out all of Blackton’s techniques (according to wikipedia, at least), which is presumably how Segundo de Chomón’s Hôtel Électrique came about.

Hôtel Électrique copies the basic template of the first film, but upgrades the setting from some dismal single room to a plush, posh French hotel, at the cutting edge of modernity. No expense is spared in providing the guests with the luxuries deserving of their class. Suitcases are unpacked, shoes are shined, hair is brushed, faces are shaved, all in perfect stop motion.

In this film, though, it’s not ghosts pestering people, but electric automation. What starts off as smoothly gliding suitcases and carefully swirling razor blades devolves into chaos when the inevitably of technological failure rears its head and everything turns to horror. The only thing to do is escape with your lives.

It would be another 80 years until Stanley Kubrick remade these two films as The Shining. Never once did he admit his inspiration.

____________

Notes

1. I watched both of these on youtube

2. The Haunted Hotel here

3. And Hotel Electrique here

4. The picture quality on both is disappointingly terrible

5. Which is a shame

6. I don’t know if there’s better quality versions available elsewhere

7. But I assume there must be, because the gif of the woman having her hair brushed in Hotel Electrique on wikipedia looks utterly marvellous

8. Although maybe that’s simply because it’s been squidged down to almost nothing

9. I watched an earlier J. Stuart Blackton cartoon previously on here

10. Although it was so awful I hid it in the comments rather than give it any prominence on the main part of the article.

11. But The Haunted Hotel is so excellent I have forgiven him now

__________

Film Information

Title: The Haunted Hotel
Director: J. Stuart Blackton
Year: 1907
Duration: 7 minutes
Watch: youtube

Title: Hôtel Électrique
Director: Segundo de Chomón
Year: 1908
Duration: 10 minutes
Watch: youtube

Categories
This Film Is 100 Years Old

Cup Final 1921 – Greatest Event In Football History (1921)

Cup Final 1921 – Greatest Event In Football History is the rather hyperbolically titled official footage of the 1921 FA Cup final between Wolves and Spurs at Stamford Bridge, which Spurs won 1-0.

But first, a copyright warning.

It’s good to know that that’s not changed in the last hundred years, at least. Although I am surprised that “Topical Budget” haven’t initiated a takedown notice yet to protect their IP.

There’s some good footage of fans arriving at the stadium, everyone bedecked in flat caps and heavy coats, pipes and cigarettes, even a replica cup or two. All the classics really.

Yet not a replica kit in sight. You have to wonder if these are real fans at all.

The match itself is gloriously wet and muddy, as all old football should be, an endless replication of the football pitches of our youths, just with 60,000 flat capped men watching on excitedly, rather than two furious fathers and a passerby or two walking their dogs.

At the end, in the biggest proof that football has changed beyond all recognition in the last 100 years, (apart from Wolves playing in red and white stripes, as if they used to be Stoke) Spurs win the cup and everyone goes home smiling, even the losers. Even the King.

__________

Notes

1. I watched this on the BFI Player

2. But it’s also on youtube if that’s easier to view.

3. Also I tried in vain to find the Harry Enfield/Mr. Cholmondley-Warner 1990s Liverpool versus 1930s Arsenal match on youtube, but it no longer seems to be there

4. So you’ll just have to imagine that all over again

5. Like I am right now

__________

Film Information

Title: Cup Final 1921 – Greatest Event In Football History
Year: 1921
Duration: 7 minutes
Watch: BFI Player ; youtube

Categories
This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

A Woman Undressing (1896)

A Woman Undressing is apparently the oldest known piece of British film erotica. Filmed in 1896 by Esmé Collings, it is almost exactly a minute of a woman undressing, although, such was the clothing style at the time, that’s still not enough time for the woman to actually get undressed.

I very much like the matryoshka element of the display, dresses under skirts under dresses, some sort of Hadean nightmare where no matter how many layers you remove you’re never any closer to getting ready for bed.

So wonder she sits down and sighs at the end. She’s probably got another fifteen slips to remove before she can leave.
__________

Notes

1. I watched this on the BFI site as usual.

2. I was somewhat afraid to google for alternate links

3. But it turns out it was okay

4. Although the youtube version I found has the world’s worst musical accompaniment.

5. When obviously it should have been this

_________

Film Information

Title: A Woman Undressing
Director: Esmé Collings
Year: 1896
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player; youtube

Categories
This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

Preston Egg Rolling (1901)

Preston Egg Rolling is a short snippet of documentary film by Mitchell and Kenyon, recording an Easter egg rolling fair, in Avenham Park in Preston, in 1901.

It doesn’t actually contain much egg rolling action (there’s a brief egg roll at about a minute in), everyone being much more interested in the film camera than the sheer mundanity of rolling an egg down the very slightest of hills.

It does contain some pretty brilliant children and babies, however, including the group photo below, and an excellently stubborn baby in a pram who resolutely refuses to hold up her egg for the camera. That child is my hero.

And that was Easter, in Preston, in 1901.

___________

Notes

1. I watched this on the BFI site again

2. Which is where all my information has been gleaned from too

3. I have very little else to add

___________

Film Information

Title: Preston Egg Rolling
Directors: Sagar Mitchell; James Kenyon
Year: 1901
Duration: 3 minutes
Watch: BFI Player; youtube

Categories
This Film Is 100 Years Old

Elsie And The Brown Bunny (1921)

Elsie And The Brown Bunny is an 8-minute advert for Cadbury from 1921, which slightly surprisingly combines two of my favourite things – Alice In Wonderland and documentary footage of industrial processes.

The first half of this is an Alice In Wonderland parody, with Elsie eating chocolates and daydreaming of bunny rabbits. She chases the slightly terrifying brown bunny down a hole. In thanks, he ferries her across the river to the industrial wonderland of a chocolate factory (which I like to think is perhaps an allusion to Orpheus’s descent into hell. Don’t look back, Elsie!).

Inside, Elsie gets a tour of the factory, looking at everything with the same baffling joy that presumably I exhibit while watching all this footage of conveyor belts and production lines and warehouses full of boxes neatly piled in endless rows.

At the end, things take a dystopian turn. The brown bunny shows Elsie the men’s and the women’s recreational areas. The men are all playing cricket and tennis in startling factory fresh whites, all smiles and laughter; the women are dressed in black, dancing and marching in unison in a tiny walled square, trapped in glorious worship to the great god of chocolate himself (a humanoid bunny rabbit).

Elsie, having looked back, wakes to a bunnyless world.

__________

Notes

1. I watched this over at the BFI site again.

2. It was only now, while watching this, that I realised Bournville was spelt Bournville and not Bourneville

3. Although as they probably haven’t included a Bournville chocolate in anything for 20 years now I can forgive myself this mistake.

__________

Film Information

Title: Elsie And The Brown Bunny
Year: 1921
Duration: 8 minutes
Watch: BFI Player; youtube

Categories
This Film Is 100 Years Old

Tai-ani: The West Gate (1921) / Foo-chow, China (1921) / River Scenery China (1921)

Tai-ani: The West Gate, Foo-chow, China, and River Scenery China are all hundred year old, one minute long, slices of real life from various places in China. Tai-ani: The West Gate and Foo-chow, China are both street scenes, while River Scenery China is footage from a busy river front somewhere. There’s not a lot of information to go with these, unfortunately, with the locations of the first and last one seemingly unknown, although the second one is, as the title suggest, from Fuzhou, but they’re still captivating (to my eye, at least).

It’s nice having the two different camera angles in the two street scenes, as each one provides a nicely different perspective on the events (or non-events) shown. The elevated perspective in the Foo-chow footage, especially, makes it feel like I’m idly watching this out my window while drinking tea/smoking/waiting for a delivery to arrive (delete as appropriate for current procrastination scenarios).

Both of those also feature the near universal constant in these sorts of films of various bystanders unapologetically and unselfconsciously watching the camera, which is another thing I always really like. (Nowadays all you get is studied indifference or reflexive performance).

This camera watching is mostly absent in the river scene, sadly, although there’s a bit of it halfway through. Maybe they’re too busy working to stare.

Or maybe they’re just watching the boats, because they’re beautiful.

I could look at them all day.

_________

Notes

1. I watched all these on the BFI Player, as usual: Tai-ani: The West Gate; Foo-chow, China; River Scenery China.

2. As I’ve said, I really like minute long shots of anything, pretty much.

3. Somehow, I doubt anyone will be watching any of mine a hundred years from now, though.

4. Unless for some reason my account on youtube is the only surviving artefact of our mysteriously lost civilisation.

_________

Film Information

Title: Tai-ani: The West Gate
Year: 1921
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title:
Year: 1921
Duration: 1
Watch: BFI Player

Title: River Scenery, China
Year: 1921
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Categories
This Film Is 100 Years Old

Der Fliegende Koffer (1921)

Der Fliegende Koffer (The Flying Suitcase) is another lovely Lotte Reiniger papercut animation, telling the fairy tale story of a princess imprisoned by her father in a tower to prevent a prophesied curse, only for her imprisonment to be the cause of that curse (this is why time travel is bad).

Anyway, the moral of the story is never imprison your daughter in a tower.

__________

Notes

1. I watched this on Blu-ray (it’s an extra on the Adventures Of Prince Ahmed video).

2. But got the images from this version on youtube.

3. The disc version is music-less, if that makes any difference.

4. But I think I preferred it that way.

5. Another Lotte Reiniger film, Das Ornament des verliebten Herzens, was the very first thing I ever reviewed on here.

6. Which is nice.

7. I would have reviewed more if I could find any trace of the ones she’s supposed to have made in 1920

8. But I couldn’t, unfortunately.

__________

Film Information

Title: Der Fliegende Koffer/The Flying Coffer/The Flying Suitcase
Director: Lotte Reiniger
Year: 1921
Duration: 8 minutes
Watch: youtube

Categories
This Christmas Is 100 Years Old

Christmas Day Sports at Rhyl (1920)

Here’s two minutes of a Christmas Day hockey match, from exactly 100 years ago, in Wales.

I like the hats, and the general easy cheerfulness of everyone involved, and the air guitar using hockey sticks, and everyone smoking, even while playing sports, which has always been one of my favourite things

And the idea that human contact was once allowed is surprisingly moving these days after all.

__________

Notes

1. I watched this on the BFI Player

2. (Note how there’s NO SNOW)

3. Or even seemingly any winter coats.

4. Also this is the second 100 year old film from Rhyl I’ve watched this year (see also the terrifying Mr. And Mrs. Jones Visit To Bracing Sunny Rhyl, North Wales, somewhere down that page.)

__________

Film Information

Title: Christmas Day Sports at Rhyl, 1920
Year: 1920
Runtime: 2 minutes
Watch: BFI Player

Categories
This Christmas Is 100 Years Old

Bataille De Neige (1897) / Boys Playing In Snow (1900)

Let’s watch some 19th century snowball fights for Christmas (as I continue to collude with the erroneous narrative that snow somehow has anything to do with Christmas at all).

The first is Bataille De Neige, directed by Louis Lumiere, and shot in 1897 in France. The second is Boys Playing In Snow, directed by I don’t actually know, and filmed in 1900 in Britain somewhere.

Now, I don’t know if France is a more genteel country than here, but the playful snowball fight in Bataille De Neige seems to lack the absolute vindictive spite of a good old fashioned British snowball fight, as captured perfectly/horrifyingly in Boys Playing In Snow, where one person is mercilessly targeted until they are dead.

And now I’ve remembered how glad I am that I’m not a child anymore, and also that it never ever snows.

__________

Notes

1. I watched Bataille De Neige on youtube (many other versions, including pointlessly colourised ones, are available).

2. And I watched Boys Playing In The Snow on the BFI Player.

3. Merry Christmas, I suppose.

__________

Film Information

Title: Bataille De Neige
Director: Louis Lumiere
Runtime: 1 minute
Year: 1897
Watch: youtube

Title: Boys Playing In Snow
Runtime: 1 minute
Year: 1900
Watch: BFI Player