Edwin S. Porter
Edwin Stanton Porter (April 21, 1870 – April 30, 1941) was an American early film pioneer, most famous as a director with Thomas Edison's company. His most important films are Life of an American Fireman (1903) and The Great Train Robbery (1903). Porter was born and raised in Connellsville, Pennsylvania to Thomas Richard Porter, a merchant, and Mary Jane (Clark) Porter; he had three brothers and one sister. After attending public schools in Connellsville and Pittsburgh, Porter worked, among other odd jobs, as an exhibition skater, a sign painter, and a telegraph operator. He developed an interest in electricity at a young age, and shared a patent at age 21 for a lamp regulator. He was employed for a time in the electrical department of William Cramp & Sons, a Philadelphia ship and engine building company, and in 1893 enlisted in the United States Navy as an electrician. During his three years' service he showed aptitude as an inventor of electrical devices to improve communications. Porter entered motion picture work in 1896, the first year movies were commercially projected on large screens in the United States.
Cinematographer
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The Night Before Christmas
"A Visit from St. Nicholas," the memorable holiday poem by Clement Clarke Moore, is adapted for the screen by longtime Edison Manufacturing Company director Edwin S. Porter. "'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a...Watch Movie -
What Happened on Twenty-Third Street, New York City
At first, this film appears to be an ordinary street scene, as a woman and her male companion casually approach the camera. Unexpectedly, her dress is blown up around her legs when she steps over a sidewalk grate (anticipating Marilyn Monroe by more than fifty years).Watch Movie -
The Great Train Robbery
More than a crucial historical artifact, THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY reveals the foundation from which the styles and stories of the contemporary cinema would later arise. Known for using such innovative filming techniques such as double exposure, cross-cutting and camera...Watch Movie
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Rescued from an Eagle's Nest
RESCUED FROM AN EAGLE'S NEST features D. W. Griffith in his first major screen role, that of a father who battles an eagle while attempting to rescue his child from the bird's nest. The story for this family-centered drama was taken from a famous incident that had been...Watch Movie -
Cohen's Fire Sale
Based on a caricature of a Jewish businessman for whom fire was "our friend" and the fire company was "our enemy," a view rendered in iconographic form on a comic postcard of the period. The story itself is quite simple and clearly depicted but character motivation, narrative...Watch Movie -
Uncle Tom's Cabin
In May of 1903, Edison's chief American rival, Biograph, assembled a series of scenes featuring famed actor Joseph Jefferson as Rip Van Winkle that they had originally filmed and released in 1896, offering them for sale to exhibitors as a special release. The Edison Company...Watch Movie
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The Life of an American Fireman
The fire rescue was a popular subject across many forms of popular culture (songs, painting, journalistic essays, photography), but particularly in the early cinema. As early as 1896, traveling showman Lyman H. Howe had assembled five short films to tell the story of a fire...Watch Movie -
Jack and the Beanstalk
Fairy tales constituted one of the earliest and most successful forms of elaborate storytelling on film, notably Georges Méliès's CINDERELLA (1899) and BLUE BEARD (1902). Inspired by such European achievements, Porter made this ten-shot fiction film that told its story in a...Watch Movie -
The Gay Shoe Clerk
This film is often noted as an early example of the interpolated close-up. However, while the action moves smoothly across the shots, attentive viewers will notice a remarkable set of discontinuities. The woman's underskirts are white in the close up but dark in the long shot....Watch Movie -
Pan-American Exposition by Night
"This picture is pronounced by the photographic profession to be a marvel in photography, and by theatrical people to be the greatest winner in panoramic views ever placed before the public," declared the Edison catalog. The panorama as a genre pre-dated the cinema by more...Watch Movie
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Electrocuting an Elephant
Topsy, the original "Baby Elephant," had been a featured attraction across the United States for 28 years. She had killed three men in her time, the last one after he gave her a lit cigarette butt as a treat, and for this last death she had to pay the ultimate price. The event...Watch Movie -
Trapeze Disrobing Act
The performer in this studio production was probably Charmion, whose "risque disrobing act on the flying trapeze" was popular at the turn of the century. Although her striptease was performed for the camera and cine-viewers, the two male spectators inside the mise-en-scène...Watch Movie -
The White Caps
In 1905 White Cap vigilante groups were particularly active in rural areas of the Border States and the Midwest. Members, generally faced with declining income and political power, acted as agents of social control, punishing offenses that the state and local governments failed to address...Watch Movie -
European Rest Cure
This spoof on the popular travelogue genre follows an American tourist across Europe and the Middle East on a "rest cure," in which one physically or emotionally wrenching disaster follows another. Foreign locales were actually pasteboard sets of pyramids, Roman ruins and a...Watch Movie
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Getting Evidence
A jealous husband visits the Hawkshaw Detective Agency (a redundant naming device in its own right) and asks the detective to obtain evidence of his wife's supposed infidelities. Only a photograph is deemed acceptable evidence and the private eye's attempts to secure it...Watch Movie -
Train Wreckers
Porter's most violent expression of the conflict between constituted society and its outsiders. The outlaw band, with its apparently irrational desire to destroy all social order, is finally eliminated by a combined force of railroad personnel and select passengers. With order finally restored, a...Watch Movie -
Life of an American Policeman
Photographed with the cooperation of the New York City Police Department, this film was first shown at two vaudeville benefits for the Police Relief Fund in early December 1905. The opening scene, which presents an officer at home with his wife and child, identifies the police...Watch Movie -
The "Teddy" Bears
Starting out as an adaptation of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," the picture moves outside the confines of the studio, suddenly changing moods and referents. The bears chase Goldilocks across a snowy landscape until "Teddy" Roosevelt intervenes, kills the two full-grown...Watch Movie
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What Happened in the Tunnel
This one-shot film was designed to be inserted into a railway panorama (a long tracking shot taken from the front of a moving train) for comic relief. G. M. Anderson (later known as "Broncho Billy") plays the "masher" who attempts to kiss a well-to-do white woman when the...Watch Movie -
The Whole Dam Family and the Dam Dog
One of several Edison films from this period that used animated intertitles. It continued "a popular fad which has been widely advertised by lithographs and souvenir mailing cards." These postcards showed portraits of various members of the Dam family, with their names: I. B....Watch Movie -
Photographing a Country Couple
A comic intersection of various early stock characters that frequently appear in popular American culture. The photographer is about to take a portrait of the country couple, when the rube wants to look through the camera. They switch places. The photographer demonstrates what...Watch Movie -
The Little Train Robbery
In this parody of THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, Edwin S. Porter burlesqued his own landmark film by substituting children for adults and using a miniature railroad and playhouse as sets. The young robbers don't take money but candy and dolls. Perhaps unintentionally, this film...Watch Movie
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The Ex-Convict
An uncredited but quite obvious adaptation of a well-known vaudeville piece, Number 973, by Robert Hilliard and Edwin Holland. Starting from the Hilliard-Holland one-act playlet, Porter visualized the storyline into a total of eight scenes. Unlike UNCLE TOM'S CABIN, THE EX-CONVICT was not filmed...Watch Movie -
Three American Beauties
Often hand-tinted, this short film was typically used by exhibitors to conclude their programs. It elaborated on a popular practice among exhibitors of the 1890s. They ended their programs with a film of the American flag waving in the breeze. The flag is the last of the...Watch Movie -
The Kleptomaniac
This condemnation of the class bias found in the American justice system works within a Progressive political framework. Porter juxtaposes the situations of two women. The impoverished woman is shown at home, in the context of her family. The barren room, the absence of a...Watch Movie -
Burlesque Suicide
Facial expression films continued to be popular in the early 1900s. In one, a man contemplates suicide but takes a drink instead. In a second version, presented here, BURLESQUE SUICIDE NO.2, the same man threatens suicide and then points his finger at the camera (and the...Watch Movie
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Nervy Nat Kisses the Bride
Sold as "WEARY WILLIE" KISSES THE BRIDE, this three-shot comedy is built around the popular stereotype of the tramp, a character that exists outside of proper society and is comically under socialized. Here, he takes advantage of a spat between a bride and groom to sneak a...Watch Movie -
A Winter Straw Ride
Two groups of young women get into a pair of horse-drawn carts and go off for a straw ride through the snowy streets. As they pass by a group of children, the children throw snowballs at the riders and they and other persons begin to join in the fun. Then one of the carts tips...Watch Movie -
Another Job for the Undertaker
This peculiar Thomas Edison short makes use of trick photography to show a man magically shorn of his belongings and clothes (as though the room in which he is sleeping is possessed). A warning about the gas lamps on the painted flat that comprises his room telegraphs the end...Watch Movie -
Interrupted Bathers
This Thomas Edison production was probably pretty racy in 1902. Its protagonists are some women bathing in a lake. Though wearing the voluminous, ultra-modest swimsuits of the era, they're mortified when a couple disreputable-looking, possibly drunk men turn up to taunt them...Watch Movie
Director
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The Night Before Christmas
"A Visit from St. Nicholas," the memorable holiday poem by Clement Clarke Moore, is adapted for the screen by longtime Edison Manufacturing Company director Edwin S. Porter. "'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a...Watch Movie -
What Happened on Twenty-Third Street, New York City
At first, this film appears to be an ordinary street scene, as a woman and her male companion casually approach the camera. Unexpectedly, her dress is blown up around her legs when she steps over a sidewalk grate (anticipating Marilyn Monroe by more than fifty years).Watch Movie -
The Great Train Robbery
More than a crucial historical artifact, THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY reveals the foundation from which the styles and stories of the contemporary cinema would later arise. Known for using such innovative filming techniques such as double exposure, cross-cutting and camera...Watch Movie
-
The House of Cards
THE HOUSE OF CARDS is designed to culminate in a confrontation between a sheriff ("Rattlesnake Jim") and a man who has gambled away someone else's money. Both love the same woman and they stage a duel where the victor will be determined by a rattlesnake. The movie critic for...Watch Movie -
A Suburbanite's Ingenious Alarm
A SUBURBANITE'S INGENIOUS ALARM's slapstick humor centers on a commuter's attempts to find a foolproof way to wake up in the morning. Once again, director Edwin S. Porter tells a simple story using a widely recognized situation. Overlapping time and action are employed as the...Watch Movie -
The Rivals
THE RIVALS was based on a comic strip by T.E. Powers that ran in the New York American. The strip (like the film) regularly showed two male rivals continually fighting for the attentions of a desirable woman. In one scene, Charlie escorts Tootsie only to have her stolen away by George. In the...Watch Movie -
Cohen's Fire Sale
Based on a caricature of a Jewish businessman for whom fire was "our friend" and the fire company was "our enemy," a view rendered in iconographic form on a comic postcard of the period. The story itself is quite simple and clearly depicted but character motivation, narrative...Watch Movie
-
Uncle Tom's Cabin
In May of 1903, Edison's chief American rival, Biograph, assembled a series of scenes featuring famed actor Joseph Jefferson as Rip Van Winkle that they had originally filmed and released in 1896, offering them for sale to exhibitors as a special release. The Edison Company...Watch Movie -
The Trainer's Daughter
THE TRAINER'S DAUGHTER has a plot similar to Theodore Kremer's A RACE FOR A WIFE (hence the similarly-themed alternate title, A RACE FOR LOVE) in which the victor of a race between the hero and an unscrupulous villain wins the bride. Unless spectators were familiar with A RACE...Watch Movie -
Laughing Gas
With African-American Bertha Regustus in the principle role, this comedy seems to depart from conventional black stereotypes. Indebted to other comedies of the period (Vitagraph made a film with an identical title less than a year earlier), LAUGHING GAS is based on the premise that laughter is...Watch Movie -
College Chums
Loosely based on Brandon Thomas' farce-comedy play CHARLEY'S AUNT, the last two-thirds of COLLEGE CHUMS may seem unique in that it shows one scene entirely in an establishing shot. In fact, the film was often screened with live actors behind the screen providing synchronous dialogue for the...Watch Movie
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The Life of an American Fireman
The fire rescue was a popular subject across many forms of popular culture (songs, painting, journalistic essays, photography), but particularly in the early cinema. As early as 1896, traveling showman Lyman H. Howe had assembled five short films to tell the story of a fire...Watch Movie -
Jack and the Beanstalk
Fairy tales constituted one of the earliest and most successful forms of elaborate storytelling on film, notably Georges Méliès's CINDERELLA (1899) and BLUE BEARD (1902). Inspired by such European achievements, Porter made this ten-shot fiction film that told its story in a...Watch Movie -
Fireside Reminiscences
Evoking the storyline of a well-known song of the era, "After the Ball" (in which a man explains why he is single and has no children), FIRESIDE REMINISCENCES details one night when a man and his sweetheart were at a ball and he found her in the arms of another man. He...Watch Movie -
The Gay Shoe Clerk
This film is often noted as an early example of the interpolated close-up. However, while the action moves smoothly across the shots, attentive viewers will notice a remarkable set of discontinuities. The woman's underskirts are white in the close up but dark in the long shot....Watch Movie
-
Pan-American Exposition by Night
"This picture is pronounced by the photographic profession to be a marvel in photography, and by theatrical people to be the greatest winner in panoramic views ever placed before the public," declared the Edison catalog. The panorama as a genre pre-dated the cinema by more...Watch Movie -
Electrocuting an Elephant
Topsy, the original "Baby Elephant," had been a featured attraction across the United States for 28 years. She had killed three men in her time, the last one after he gave her a lit cigarette butt as a treat, and for this last death she had to pay the ultimate price. The event...Watch Movie -
Trapeze Disrobing Act
The performer in this studio production was probably Charmion, whose "risque disrobing act on the flying trapeze" was popular at the turn of the century. Although her striptease was performed for the camera and cine-viewers, the two male spectators inside the mise-en-scène...Watch Movie -
The Terrible Kids
Part of the popular bad boy genre that would soon come under heavy criticism for providing young viewers with undesirable role models. Porter's comedy shows two boys disrupting a neighborhood's routine with the help of their dog, played by Mannie. Every scene is a variation on...Watch Movie
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The White Caps
In 1905 White Cap vigilante groups were particularly active in rural areas of the Border States and the Midwest. Members, generally faced with declining income and political power, acted as agents of social control, punishing offenses that the state and local governments failed to address...Watch Movie -
A Little Girl Who Did Not Believe in Santa Claus
When a rich boy learns from a poor girl that she does not believe in Santa Claus because he has never visited her, the boy decides to get to the bottom of this travesty. You've never seen anything like what happens next. This 1907 Edison short directed by Edwin S. Porter...Watch Movie -
The Burning of Durland's Riding Academy
Fires reported on the front page of New York newspapers routinely brought filmmakers to the scene. Such films were popular in vaudeville houses and fulfilled the cinema's mandate as a "visual newspaper." The fire at Durland's Riding Academy, on Manhattan's west side, between...Watch Movie -
European Rest Cure
This spoof on the popular travelogue genre follows an American tourist across Europe and the Middle East on a "rest cure," in which one physically or emotionally wrenching disaster follows another. Foreign locales were actually pasteboard sets of pyramids, Roman ruins and a...Watch Movie
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The Miller's Daughter
The sinful, decadent city is contrasted to the simple, honest countryside in this fascinating reworking of Steele MacKaye's ever-popular melodrama "Hazel Kirke" (1880). Events occurring off-stage are shown in the Porter film, including Hazel's suicidal jump and her rescue. And...Watch Movie -
How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns
Edison's principle domestic rival in 1904 was once again the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company. Biograph was then producing a series of popular story films, which it used as exclusives for its exhibition circuits. Edison affiliated renters and exhibitors were deeply...Watch Movie
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Getting Evidence
A jealous husband visits the Hawkshaw Detective Agency (a redundant naming device in its own right) and asks the detective to obtain evidence of his wife's supposed infidelities. Only a photograph is deemed acceptable evidence and the private eye's attempts to secure it...Watch Movie -
Train Wreckers
Porter's most violent expression of the conflict between constituted society and its outsiders. The outlaw band, with its apparently irrational desire to destroy all social order, is finally eliminated by a combined force of railroad personnel and select passengers. With order finally restored, a...Watch Movie -
Life of an American Policeman
Photographed with the cooperation of the New York City Police Department, this film was first shown at two vaudeville benefits for the Police Relief Fund in early December 1905. The opening scene, which presents an officer at home with his wife and child, identifies the police...Watch Movie -
Old Maid Having Her Picture Taken
Gilbert Saroni was a well-known vaudeville performer and female impersonator who specialized in playing unattractive old maids in vaudeville sketches like "The Giddy Girl." The old maid's features are so horrific that when confronted with her visage, mirrors crack and cameras...Watch Movie
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The "Teddy" Bears
Starting out as an adaptation of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," the picture moves outside the confines of the studio, suddenly changing moods and referents. The bears chase Goldilocks across a snowy landscape until "Teddy" Roosevelt intervenes, kills the two full-grown...Watch Movie -
What Happened in the Tunnel
This one-shot film was designed to be inserted into a railway panorama (a long tracking shot taken from the front of a moving train) for comic relief. G. M. Anderson (later known as "Broncho Billy") plays the "masher" who attempts to kiss a well-to-do white woman when the...Watch Movie -
The Whole Dam Family and the Dam Dog
One of several Edison films from this period that used animated intertitles. It continued "a popular fad which has been widely advertised by lithographs and souvenir mailing cards." These postcards showed portraits of various members of the Dam family, with their names: I. B....Watch Movie
-
Photographing a Country Couple
A comic intersection of various early stock characters that frequently appear in popular American culture. The photographer is about to take a portrait of the country couple, when the rube wants to look through the camera. They switch places. The photographer demonstrates what...Watch Movie -
The Little Train Robbery
In this parody of THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, Edwin S. Porter burlesqued his own landmark film by substituting children for adults and using a miniature railroad and playhouse as sets. The young robbers don't take money but candy and dolls. Perhaps unintentionally, this film...Watch Movie -
The Ex-Convict
An uncredited but quite obvious adaptation of a well-known vaudeville piece, Number 973, by Robert Hilliard and Edwin Holland. Starting from the Hilliard-Holland one-act playlet, Porter visualized the storyline into a total of eight scenes. Unlike UNCLE TOM'S CABIN, THE EX-CONVICT was not filmed...Watch Movie -
The Kiss
THE KISS revisits (and recreates) the kiss between actors John C. Rice and May Irwin from the play THE WIDOW JONES. However here it stars Fred Ott (arguably known best for his earlier sneeze) and an unknown woman. Romantic, in its way, but also coy. The film has been described elsewhere as an...Watch Movie
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Three American Beauties
Often hand-tinted, this short film was typically used by exhibitors to conclude their programs. It elaborated on a popular practice among exhibitors of the 1890s. They ended their programs with a film of the American flag waving in the breeze. The flag is the last of the...Watch Movie -
Rector's to Claremont
This picture remains one of the mystery films in The Museum of Modern Art's collection of Edison negatives. Though often dated 1903, this film probably made in the summer of 1904 or even the summer of 1905. Never released commercially, it was almost certainly commissioned by a...Watch Movie -
The Kleptomaniac
This condemnation of the class bias found in the American justice system works within a Progressive political framework. Porter juxtaposes the situations of two women. The impoverished woman is shown at home, in the context of her family. The barren room, the absence of a...Watch Movie -
Burlesque Suicide
Facial expression films continued to be popular in the early 1900s. In one, a man contemplates suicide but takes a drink instead. In a second version, presented here, BURLESQUE SUICIDE NO.2, the same man threatens suicide and then points his finger at the camera (and the...Watch Movie
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The Seven Ages
Porter photographed a series of short vignettes reminiscent of kiss films such as THE JOHN C. RICE-MAY IRWIN KISS (1896), structuring them around a premise provided by Shakespeare's "seven ages of man," a theme often illustrated in nineteenth-century lantern shows. Beginning with toddlers and...Watch Movie -
Tale the Autumn Leaves Told
This short fragment demonstrates the ways that Edwin S. Porter continued to seek visual novelties favoring a stylistically audacious image over straightforward storytelling. Here he uses different camera mattes (each in the shape of a leaf) for every scene. At a moment when...Watch Movie -
Nervy Nat Kisses the Bride
Sold as "WEARY WILLIE" KISSES THE BRIDE, this three-shot comedy is built around the popular stereotype of the tramp, a character that exists outside of proper society and is comically under socialized. Here, he takes advantage of a spat between a bride and groom to sneak a...Watch Movie
-
A Winter Straw Ride
Two groups of young women get into a pair of horse-drawn carts and go off for a straw ride through the snowy streets. As they pass by a group of children, the children throw snowballs at the riders and they and other persons begin to join in the fun. Then one of the carts tips...Watch Movie -
Another Job for the Undertaker
This peculiar Thomas Edison short makes use of trick photography to show a man magically shorn of his belongings and clothes (as though the room in which he is sleeping is possessed). A warning about the gas lamps on the painted flat that comprises his room telegraphs the end...Watch Movie -
Interrupted Bathers
This Thomas Edison production was probably pretty racy in 1902. Its protagonists are some women bathing in a lake. Though wearing the voluminous, ultra-modest swimsuits of the era, they're mortified when a couple disreputable-looking, possibly drunk men turn up to taunt them...Watch Movie -
The Strenuous Life
A lighthearted spoof of family life and fatherhood. President Roosevelt, who had just won reelection, believed Americans had to lead "the strenuous life" (it was the title of one of his books) if the United States was to retain its position of world leadership. He also...Watch Movie
Writer
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The Great Train Robbery
More than a crucial historical artifact, THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY reveals the foundation from which the styles and stories of the contemporary cinema would later arise. Known for using such innovative filming techniques such as double exposure, cross-cutting and camera...Watch Movie -
The House of Cards
THE HOUSE OF CARDS is designed to culminate in a confrontation between a sheriff ("Rattlesnake Jim") and a man who has gambled away someone else's money. Both love the same woman and they stage a duel where the victor will be determined by a rattlesnake. The movie critic for...Watch Movie -
The Life of an American Fireman
The fire rescue was a popular subject across many forms of popular culture (songs, painting, journalistic essays, photography), but particularly in the early cinema. As early as 1896, traveling showman Lyman H. Howe had assembled five short films to tell the story of a fire...Watch Movie
Producer
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The Great Train Robbery
More than a crucial historical artifact, THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY reveals the foundation from which the styles and stories of the contemporary cinema would later arise. Known for using such innovative filming techniques such as double exposure, cross-cutting and camera...Watch Movie -
The Life of an American Fireman
The fire rescue was a popular subject across many forms of popular culture (songs, painting, journalistic essays, photography), but particularly in the early cinema. As early as 1896, traveling showman Lyman H. Howe had assembled five short films to tell the story of a fire...Watch Movie -
The Burning of Durland's Riding Academy
Fires reported on the front page of New York newspapers routinely brought filmmakers to the scene. Such films were popular in vaudeville houses and fulfilled the cinema's mandate as a "visual newspaper." The fire at Durland's Riding Academy, on Manhattan's west side, between...Watch Movie -
European Rest Cure
This spoof on the popular travelogue genre follows an American tourist across Europe and the Middle East on a "rest cure," in which one physically or emotionally wrenching disaster follows another. Foreign locales were actually pasteboard sets of pyramids, Roman ruins and a...Watch Movie
-
Burlesque Suicide
Facial expression films continued to be popular in the early 1900s. In one, a man contemplates suicide but takes a drink instead. In a second version, presented here, BURLESQUE SUICIDE NO.2, the same man threatens suicide and then points his finger at the camera (and the...Watch Movie -
Nervy Nat Kisses the Bride
Sold as "WEARY WILLIE" KISSES THE BRIDE, this three-shot comedy is built around the popular stereotype of the tramp, a character that exists outside of proper society and is comically under socialized. Here, he takes advantage of a spat between a bride and groom to sneak a...Watch Movie -
Interrupted Bathers
This Thomas Edison production was probably pretty racy in 1902. Its protagonists are some women bathing in a lake. Though wearing the voluminous, ultra-modest swimsuits of the era, they're mortified when a couple disreputable-looking, possibly drunk men turn up to taunt them...Watch Movie
Editor
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The Great Train Robbery
More than a crucial historical artifact, THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY reveals the foundation from which the styles and stories of the contemporary cinema would later arise. Known for using such innovative filming techniques such as double exposure, cross-cutting and camera...Watch Movie

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