Categories
This Christmas Is 100 Years Old

The Little Match Seller (1902) / The Little Match Girl (1914)

Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Match Girl is probably the saddest story ever written, and these two adaptations of it are suitably bleak.

The Little Match Seller, directed in 1902 by Percy Nash, is a masterpiece of minimalism. A single static shot of a young homeless girl in the snow, it makes great use of overlays/double exposures as she dreams of some heat and warmth and maybe even a smidgen of Christmas cheer. But of course there is none to be found.

It’s less than four minutes long, and utterly heartbreaking.

The second version, this time called The Little Match Girl, was directed by James Williamson in 1914. This one is a more elaborate affair, and piles on even more misery by including an alcoholic father and an absent, possibly dead, mother.

There’s some nice use of tinting here, which gives a fairly brutal sense of cold and genuine warmth to the relevant scenes, and the staging of the dreams is well done (although the animated turkey is both slightly strange and strangely unsettling). But though I liked it a lot, overall it lacks something compared to the economical poetry of the earlier version.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

__________

Notes

1. I watched the 1902 version on youtube.

2. And the 1914 version on the BFI Player.

3. And you can read the original story here.

4. If you dare.

5. The 1914 version has Dutch intertitles. I’ve made some rough translations below (using google translate rather than any actual understanding of the language, so they might be wildly out):


2. On Christmas Eve
3. "Not a single bunch sold so far."
4. "Daddy will hit me."
5. Her father's daily abode.
6. If only she had her mother again.
7. "Did you bring me a lot of money?"
8. "Get out! And don't you dare come back without some money!"
9. "Would you like some matches, Sir?"
10. Barefoot
12. "Let me light just one match to keep me warm."
13. What she dreamed as she lit the second match.
14. "Just one more, because it's so terribly cold!"
15. "Take me with you, Mother. Don't leave me again!"
16. Christmas Morning - rest now, forever.

__________

Film Information

Title: The Little Match Seller
Director: James Williamson
Year: 1902
Duration: 3 minutes
Watch: youtube

Title: The Little Match Girl
Director: Percy Nash
Year: 1914
Duration: 10 minutes
Watch: BFI Player; youtube

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

Falling Leaves (1912) / La Fee Aux Choux (1896/1900/1902)

Falling Leaves is a short drama about a woman dying from TB, and her younger sister’s determination to save her. It was directed in 1912 by Alice Guy-Blache, the pioneering French filmmaker, who was, it seems, the first person who ever thought to actually make scripted narratives (the faintly terrifying La Fee Aux Choux), rather than using cameras purely for capturing documentary footage.

The centrepiece of Falling Leaves is the wonderful scene where the ailing woman’s young sister over hears the doctor saying that she’ll be dead by the time the leaves have fallen from the tree, and so decides to try and tie the leaves to the branches, so that her sister can live on (and she does!)

Sorry, that was a spoiler.

Now, like I said, La Fee Aux Choux is thought to be the first scripted narrative on film. The original is lost, unfortunately, but Alice Guy-Blache remade it twice (in 1900 and 1902), and it’s that 1900 version that I watched here (although the youtube versions all label it as the 1896 version). The film’s only a minute long, and features a fairy plucking new born babies from the cabbages they grew in.

Anyway, it’s terrifying. It really is.

__________

Notes

1. I watched Falling Leaves on blu-ray, as part of this excellent BFI box set.

2. But as I don’t have a blu-ray player in my laptop, the screenshots came from youtube.

3. The disc version had a really great soundtrack (by Serge Bromberg).

4. Which the youtube version sadly lacks.

5. I watched La Fee Aux Choux on youtube though.

6. In super blur o vision, unfortunately.

7. You might be able to find better quality versions out there somewhere

8. But I could not.

__________

Film Information

Title: Falling Leaves
Director: Alice Guy-Blache
Year: 1912
Duration: 12 minutes
Watch: youtube; Internet Archive

Title: La Fee Aux Choux
Director: Alice Guy-Blache
Year: 1896/1900/1902
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: youtube

Categories
This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

The Flying Train (1902)

The Flying Train is two minutes of documentary footage from the newly opened elevated train system in Wuppertal, Germany, in 1902. It’s just breathtakingly beautiful, and weirdly, impossibly, futuristic, even though it’s 118 years old. And a train.

There’s always something soothing and alluring about watching old footage of city streets recorded from trains, trams and buses or whatever, presumably the lovely unhurried emptiness of the streets, with pedestrians allowed to amble wherever they please, but this footage, I think, might be my favourite ever from that particular genre.

There’s a nice comparison video here, showing this film and some footage filmed from the same track in 2015. You don’t get chickens wandering aimlessly around in the middle of the road in 2015, but apart from that it’s pleasingly similar. But there’s very little that’s soothing about it, due to the cloying claustrophobia of cars.

Also, I don’t know if they have trains like this everywhere in Germany (I’ve never been), but I first saw these in the background of one of the dance scenes in Wim Wenders’ documentary, Pina, a few years ago, and thought even then they looked like something from some unattainable future. I just didn’t know that future was 120 years old.

Who knew Metropolis was a documentary.

__________

Notes

1. I watched this on youtube here.

2. And I also watched the wonderful comparison video on youtube too.

3. And Although I didn’t watched Pina on youtube, I did find the clip I captured a still from above on there.

4. So hooray for youtube, I suppose.

5. There’s a nice article about The Flying Train film (and some others) here too: This 1902 Footage of a Flying Train Is the Film of the Summer.

__________

Film Information

Title: The Flying Train
Year: 1902
Watch: youtube
Further Information: This 1902 Footage of a Flying Train Is the Film of the Summer (article; Wuppertal Schwebebahn 1902 & 2015 side by side comparison video

Categories
This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

These Adverts Are More Than 100 Years Old (1898-1918)

This week I have been watching all the old adverts I could find.

Vinolia Soap (1898) / Good Night (1898)

These are two of the oldest British film adverts known to still exist, and both were made by Charles Goodwin Norton, who ran a stationary shop in King’s Cross, while also making his own films (as a hobby I think, rather than as a business).

The first of these is an advert for Vinolia Soap, which presumably doesn’t exist any more, but might well do for all I know, because I’m afraid I’m not an expert on soap.

The advert itself consists of some people packing the soap into boxes on a table, while round them troop a swarm of women holding the packages up to the camera, all of them trapped in a continuous loop of movement, unable to escape, even while the wind whips up the sheets of wrapping paper and swirls them all around in a vortex around their feet.

According to the internet, Vinolia Soap was the exclusive soap available to passengers on the Titanic, so maybe this wasn’t an advert at all, but instead some sort of unholy incantation, inscribing it with an infernal curse.

The second of these films, Good Night, isn’t anywhere near as ominous, and isn’t even really an advert. But it is quite charming, so I’m going to include it here anyway.

Outside Charles Goodwin Norton’s stationary shop, a group of children stare at the camera, while others hold up signs thanking the viewer for attending whatever one of his film screenings it was they’d just attended.

Although, now that I think about it, maybe this is the first ever post-credits short, and therefore entirely to blame for the abject horror that afflicts all superhero films to this very day, and so is actually even more of an accursed product than Vinolia Soap ever was.

Three Linotype Machines (1900)

Three Linotype Machines is a single minute-long shot of three linotype machines in operation.

There’s no title cards or other information to explain anything about the machines, so I couldn’t tell you if these are the sort of linotype machines I would be inclined to buy, but I’m not sure I mind, as I just find it hypnotic to watch them, and could do so for much long than a single minute at a time.

(This also reminded me of this short film of a printing press in action, that I posted about here before.)

The Spirit Of His Forefathers (1900) / Britain’s Best Bicycle (1902)

The Spirit Of His Forefathers is a 30 second advert for some whisky, based around a pun on spirit, and the punchline of which I have spoiled in the picture below.

I have no regrets.

Britain’s Best Bicycle is another 30 second advert, this time for Rudge-Whitworth Bicycles (later bought by Raleigh, it says there, making me wish I’d had a Rudge-Whitworth Chopper all those years ago now).

In this advert, a man rides a bike, which isn’t as good as Rudge-Whitworth bike. He gets laughed at for his crimes.

Now, these two adverts are more recognisable as adverts, really, to my modern eyes, than any of the earlier ones above (although technically the whisky one is earlier than any of them, as its a remake of a 1897 version of the same ad). And while the bike one is a bit rubbish, the whisky one you could pretty much imagine being an advert right now, although the kilt man would probably be one of the forefathers now, I suppose.

And it’d be for porage oats.

Ruining the pun forever.

J. White And Sons Ltd, The Furniture Specialists, Chesterfield (1905)

J. White And Sons Ltd… is a fifteen minute long advertorial tour of the J. White and Sons furniture shop in Chesterfield, in 1905, where we get to see the exterior of the shop from the High Street, the inside of the shop, the workshops, and more (especially concerning pianos).

It’s quite interesting (but probably not very exciting), and I liked the way that, even if furniture shops don’t make 15 minutes adverts for themselves any more, they at least still look basically the same inside. I bet everything even then was too expensive to ever buy, too.

Also, the street scenes at the start are particularly wonderful, not least because of the preponderance of hats, with even the children wearing flat caps.

Even the babies are wearing flat caps.

The Smallest Car In The Largest City In The World (1913)

The Smallest Car In The Largest City In The World, might not actually be an advert for a Cadillac (it purports to be a news item showing the miniature car being give as a gift to the King of Norway), but I’m pretty sure it’s an advert for a Cadillac.

This film is pretty wonderful, regardless of its actual designation, not just for its long sequences of the miniature car travelling through central London, huge crowds of excited wellwishers following behind, but also for the second half of the film, where somehow they get 3 children in the car, and also they get arrested, and then there’s a dog there too for some reason I don’t know why but it’s wonderful you should watch it

Shine, Sir? (1916)

Shine, Sir? is an almost supernaturally boring, 7 minute long advert for some Australian brand of shoe shine, patriotically called Kiwi, that was originally from 1916, but here comes with a strangely reverent introduction from someone in the far future year of 1965, marvelling at how advanced the advertising methods of first world war Britain were.

At the end, though, an animated kiwi vomits out the word KIWI a bunch of times, and suddenly the whole enterprise is redeemed.

__________

Notes

1. I watched all these on the BFI Player again

2. At the links in the information bit below.

3. I could probably have posted this all as several separate entries, rather than a single long one

4. But I did not

5. And now never shall.

6. I watched the furniture shop advert while listening to the Kicking A Couple Around EP by Smog

7. Which didn’t really fit very well at all, I must say.

8. But then I watched the littlest car in the world one while listening to 14 Floating Infinity by Aphex Twin

9. And it synced almost perfectly

10. To the first half at least

11. As it ran out before the end.

__________

Film Information

Title: Vinolia Soap
Director: Charles Goodwin Norton
Year: 1898
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Good Night
Director: Charles Goodwin Norton
Year: 1898
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Three Linotype Machines
Year: 1900
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: The Spirit Of His Forefathers
Year: 1900
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Britain’s Best Bicycle
Year: 1902
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI Player

Title: J. White And Sons Ltd, The Furniture Specialists, Chesterfield
Year: 1905
Duration: 14 minutes
Watch: BFI Player

Title: The Smallest Car In The Largest City In The World
Director: F.S. Bennett
Year: 1913
Duration: 6 minutes
Watch: BFI Player

Title: Shine, Sir?
Year: 1916, 1965
Duration: 7 minutes
Watch: BFI Player

Categories
This Film Is More Than 100 Years Old

Le Voyage Dans La Lune (1902) / Mister Moon (1901)

Le Voyage Dans La Lune (or, A Trip To The Moon), directed by Georges Melies in 1902, is perhaps the most well-known of all early films, especially the image of the moon with a spaceship in its eye.

I’ve always quite liked the way that the conventions, limitations and constraints of early film-making led to a similarity in style and appearance to early computer games (especially adventure games), which were the result of a very different set of technical problems, but which utilised very similar solutions.

So here you get static single screen sets with lavishly painted backgrounds, through which the characters move one scene at a time (such as the two images immediately below).

Partly this would have been due to the limitations/difficulties of the filming process itself (movement juddering, smooth camera control, re-focusing, etc), partly for stylistic reasons (the recreation of a theatre-style viewpoint) and also because of the cost, size and other logistical problems in the making, building and staging of sets.

These are evoked, in a way, by the static pre-rendered screens of something like Dizzy or Monkey Island, which allowed for a much higher graphical detail at the expense of screen movement/scrolling, the number of moving characters/enemies, and so on.

The more obvious lineage, of course, is that of Le Voyage Dans La Lune’s imagery being referenced and replicated in the 120 years since in everything from subsequent HG Wells and Jules Verne adaptations, to Tintin and Flash Gordon (the crashed spaceship and the hopping Selenite are very similar to the initial landing scene and the strange green monster that gets incinerated a bit later in the 1980s version), right the way up to The Smashing Pumpkins (I’ve often wondered if that video was the creation-myth of steampunk).

When they return to Earth, the scene where they crash into the sea is very similar to the corresponding scene in The Automatic Motorist, even down to the newts swimming about.

(I’d noticed the more obvious homages to this in The “?” Motorist and The Automatic Motorist when I watched them, but had missed this one)

I also watched Mister Moon, a 1 minute promotional video for the musical hall star Percy Henri’s comedy act, filmed in 1901, and which also features a terrifying human-faced moon (and nothing else at all, in this case).

Unsurprisingly, I found this utterly terrifying.

__________

Notes

1. I watched both of these on the BFI player again – Le Voyage Dans La Lune; Mister Moon.

2. The crashed spaceship image from A Trip To The Moon is one I’ve, erm, well, stolen repeatedly over the years, although I’ve not yet resorted to moons with faces, thankfully.

3. I didn’t realise the BFI player was region locked to the UK, so I’ll try to add alternate links to things I’ve watched from now on

4. If I can

5. Although you might well have been glad of the chance to not see the full horror of Mister Moon, to be honest.

__________

Film Information

Title: Le Voyage Dans La Lune
Director: Georges Melies
Year: 1902
Duration: 12 minutes
Watch: BFI; youtube

Title: Mister Moon
Director: Percy Honri
Year: 1901
Duration: 1 minute
Watch: BFI; youtube