The Evidence of the Film (1913)

User Rating:

6.4/10   

Directors:

Lawrence Marston
Edwin Thanhouser

Release Date:

10 January 1913 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Short

Plot:

A messenger boy is wrongfully accused of stealing bonds worth $20,000. |

Awards:

1 win

Cast

William Garwood	...	The Broker
Marie Eline	...	Messenger Boy
Riley Chamberlin	...	Clerk
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Florence La Badie	...	Sister of Little Boy

Runtime:

15 min

Country:

USA

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Company:

Thanhouser Film Corporation

Self-referential and the Camera's POV

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This is a conceptually interesting early self-referential short film. It involves a film-within-a-film, and it examines the nature of film as a recorder of events (in the story, a film clip becomes evidence in serving justice). There's also a glimpse of the movie-making process, as the evidence was of a crime occurring in front of a camera filming a movie, and there's a behind-the-scenes look at an editing room. Here, all the editors are women. As fellow commenter wmorrow59 pointed out, the discovery of "truth" (in this film, unambiguous truth) in photography in this film reminds one of Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 self-reflexive classic, 'Blowup.'

The execution of the concepts is rather slipshod, though. The shots of the movie being made within the movie should have been longer and more elaborate, although the quick cuts and general editing of this film isn't bad for 1912. The filmmaker's understanding of the position of the camera and the actors, as well as the perspective of the camera, however, was lacking. This results in the goof of misplacing the position of the actors and the camera from the shooting of the crime scene when we first see it being filmed to when we see the scene projected later. That's just bad continuity.

One exception, however, is the aptness of showing the crime from a somewhat obscure angle behind the actors for when we first see the crime, with the camera filming the "real" crime and the fictional movie within the frame, and then showing the camera's perspective, which provides a clearer view of the crime, when the film is projected later. Additionally, the scene where the film-within-the-film is projected--the camera's POV superimposed--is great. A scene of an audience (our surrogates) watching a film dates back to Robert W. Paul's 'The Countryman the Cinematograph' (1901), and D.W. Griffith made a similar scene in 'Those Awful Hats' (1909), but the superimposition effect in this film is especially convincing, and the emphasis on the POV of the camera is especially innovative.

The notion of film as a recorder of events, fictional or actual, is a limited and narrow view of the medium, though. It's apparent the filmmakers weren't trying to explore the depths of cinema. I suppose they believed they were making an ordinary crime drama. Compare this to another self-referential film from 1912, 'The Cameraman's Revenge' ('Mest kinematograficheskogo operatora'), which is also about recording "real" events and then indicting the players with the projection of the film later. Aside from the fact that Wladyslaw Starewicz used replica insects for his film rather than people, his film also differs from 'The Evidence of the Film' in that its filmic perspectives are more elaborate and its insights on the medium are richer. Nevertheless, 'Evidence of the Film' is an interesting early self-referential film.