Hadj Cheriff (1894) User Reviews

What ever is he doing?

[Boba_Fett1138 · 5/10 · 12 October 2010]

This was a bit weird to watch. It's an early Edison movie that shows variety artist Hadji Cheriff doing some crazy moves. It's hard to tell what he is actually doing and it's all just basically him jumping and swirling around. Appearantly there is a knife involved with all of this but I couldn't really see this at all.

With these type of early movies it was also the intention to cash in on it. Instead of letting people go to the theaters and carnivals for this sort of things, Edison and company attempted to bring the entertainment to the people with his short movies. These early movies also serve as a test for this, to see how well it all looks and what can and can't be done on film.

Hadji Cheriff almost jumps out of the screen a couple of times and he seems to have an hard time staying in the middle of the shot. I don't know if this is true but they also have seemed to mess a bit with the movie its frame rate. It's almost as if this movie is being played in slow-motion. For basically all of their sport related subjects, the Edison studio's, shot with 30 fps, while for their other, 'normal' everyday subjects, they used 20 or less. No idea if they actually attempted to create a slow-motion effect but fact is that all of the movements don't really flow that well and don't seem very fluent. Perhaps it would had worked out better all if the movie had been longer than its 19 seconds. There is now a clear beginning movie but there is no clear ending to it all. The movie just cuts off, while Hadji Cheriff is still in the middle of some moves.

In my opinion this just isn't a very interesting subject, though it's still interesting to see how people were entertained by several different variety artists and their acts, over an hundred years ago. As a test it doesn't seem like a very successful or influential one because of its subject and how it eventually turned out to look. Still they must had liked something about it, since they would use Hadji Cheriff years later again for one of their short movies; "Arabian Gun Twirler".

Just not good or interesting enough in my opinion.

5/10

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Childish but fun

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 11 October 2013]

This is another short film from Dickson's and Heise's very prolific 1894. It stars Hadji Cheriff in his first of two films as a well... as what exactly? I'm not sure all the dancing and jumping in this one can be really considered art? Maybe more in the artistic sense of an athlete as the somersaults he shows are pretty much the only impressive thing. The rest is quite fun though and he seems to be enjoying himself. The film is okay, but the topic has done better by Dickson himself a couple times. Nonetheless, it's fun to watch Cheriff's joy during his almost break-dance-like movements and it's worth a watch for silent film enthusiasts.

Edison Manufacturing Company recruits husband of known . . .

[cricket30 · 5/10 · 6 August 2013]

. . . sex criminal (who was on the lam with the circus) to hold up as an example to the youth of America in HADJ CHERIFF, one of the first movies from the "pre-code" days. Toward the end of this 16.06-second short, one can see Mr. Cheriff (if that's his real name; more likely it is an alias) fling his dagger toward someone off screen, stage right. Reading between the lines of this and the film note given for the short on Kino's 4-disc set, EDISON: INVENTING THE MOVIES, it is probable that the knife found its mark in the heart of some Edison henchman who had just said something off-color about Mrs. Cheriff during the filming of this fatal short. "Boys will be boys," and all of the light bulb mogul's assistants were used to going into the big city "red light" districts for nights of wild debauchery after long, low-paid days of inventing stuff. Most likely this is how the Cheriff clan came to the attention of the men with the cameras back in New Jersey in the first place. Though a "second camera" would have been able to enhance this short through a "reaction shot" from the dying victim, one-camera shoots were still the norm in 1894.

A Small Sample Of What May Have Been A Rather Interesting Act

[Snow Leopard · 4 January 2006]

This Edison Kinetoscope feature provides a small sample of Hadj Cheriff's act, which may well have been rather interesting to watch in person. Some of the footage here is rather bland, but this seems like the kind of performance that would be significantly enhanced by the use of color and sound, especially in the background. Many of the earliest Edison movies featured performers from vaudeville and other sources, and some worked better than others on film.

Cheriff was supposed to be known for an assortment of offbeat skills, ranging from knife juggling to displays of physical strength to wild dance-like movements. Here, most of the footage focuses on a rapid series of gymnastic- or dance-like motions, such as cartwheels and the like. Since it was performed in Edison's 'Black Maria' studio, it has a very plain background that does not do anything to enhance the performance.

One interesting aspect of many of the Kinetoscope films is that so many of them were designed to cash in on things that were then currently popular. But today they provide a look into the forms of entertainment that were popular in the past, and even these brief glimpses at popular performers of the era can be interesting, even aside from the merits of the movies themselves.

High energy act...

[kobe1413 · 1/10 · 28 February 2014]

William Heise and W.K.L. Dickson direct this short featuring Hadji Cheriff, an Arabian vaudeville performer. His act, as shown here, consists of several acrobatic moves. He was filmed in Edison's studio, the Black Maria.

This film displays more energy then most of the films from the early Edison era. Cheriff only has limited room in which to maneuver but still displays a good deal of grace and athleticism. Cheriff would also make a short for Heise and Dickson's successor at Edison, James H. White, called "Arabian Gun Twirler".

A 2 out of 10.

Wotta Lotta Tinsicas!

[F Gwynplaine MacIntyre · 3/10 · 2 March 2010]

Hadj Cheriff was apparently an Egyptian; his name in Arabic means 'Prince who has made pilgrimage to Mecca'. He performed in 1890s U.S. vaudeville under several variations of that name, including 'Hadji'. Apparently he did a bit of everything, but wasn't particularly adept at anything.

A previous IMDb reviewer, Snow Leopard of Ohio, says that this film depicts Cheriff performing 'cartwheels'. That's not correct. What we see here is the acrobatic manoeuvre known (in the USA and elsewhere) as a forward tinsica. Sort of a cartwheel with a half-twist, basically a tinsica (also spelt 'tinsika') is performed so that the hands touch the ground with one arm in front of the other (as in a walkover) but with the feet landing side-by-side, as in a handspring.

I don't blame Snow Leopard for the error. Tinsicas were once a standard part of gymnastics training in the USA, but for some reason are no longer taught to Stateside gymnasts. When I watch U.S. gymnastic competitions (which I do far more often than you might suppose), I see nary a tinsica.

This short film consists solely of a stocky bearded man performing forward tinsicas, over and over. The film has some slight merit if someone needs to know what a tinsica looks like. But Hadj Cheriff's tinsicas are not impressive: they have very little amplitude, and he consistently leads with his right arm while going too far sideways, as if doing a cartwheel. A more adept gymnast would alternate leading arms, performing the forward tinsica *forward* rather than sidelong. I would be more impressed if Cheriff could do a backward tinsica, which is more difficult. Evidently he couldn't, or he would have performed a few in this brief film.

For its historic significance and for demonstrating what a (very badly done) tinsica looks like, I'll rate this movie 3 out of 10.

Interesting Bit of History from Edison

[Michael_Elliott · 15 December 2010]

Hadj Cheriff (1894)

Edison was known to gather up famous performing acts, bring them to his studio, film them and then make cash off of them by throwing the film into the dozens of "picture palaces" throughout the country. This time we get Hadj Cheriff doing various flips and swirls for just over a minute. That's pretty much all there is as it's never quite clear what type of "act" Cheriff is trying to put on but I think this is due for a number of reasons but the main one being that this studio was so small that it really didn't allow the acts to do much. You can see this in countless films like this and especially those acts from Broadway who need an entire stage to do their thing and they just can't do it in such a small space. I'm sure this was a problem for Cheriff so this here is basically just for fans of early cinema who enjoy seeing this type of thing.

Acrobatic Jumps and Knife Hurls

[Tornado_Sam · 28 February 2018]

Hadj Cheriff, (aka Hadji Cheriff), both an acrobat and knife juggler, was one of the many performers filmed in Edison's Black Maria studio in 1894. Unlike some of Edison's more famous performers (like Annie Oakley) Cheriff's person is one of those instances who's appearance in film alone is the only reason his name would be familiar today. No doubt one of the reasons his act itself isn't even as remembered as Annabelle Moore's serpentine dances or Sandow's flexing is probably due to the fact it was neither remade nor shows any particularly interesting feats of skill to today's audience.

The performance itself is nothing overly impressive and appears to be only a brief selection from the entire act, which was probably a lot more interesting in its entirety. The 20-second short consists of Cheriff hurling a dagger out of his hand before beginning a series of tinsicas--I would have written 'cartwheels' had I not read F. Gywnplaine MacIntyre review correcting this assumption. No doubt most reviewers have made the same mistake countless times to where the act itself seems unimpressive, and is the reason why it is not as recognized. The moves may not seem impressive or interesting to the average viewer's eye, but there obviously had to have been some publicity attracted if the studio bothered making a movie of it. After all, W. K. L. Dickson probably would never have filmed Cheriff if his act wasn't successful.

Even despite the fact the material selected was probably from a more unimpressive bit of the performance, there's still plenty of watchability making these 20 seconds worth viewing. While only a small section of an act that can't be put in context, the clip still illustrates an example of what people would pay to see during the period and helps record a little-known performer that otherwise wouldn't be remembered. Fortunately, Edison actually did film more of Cheriff's act about five years following this, with "Arabian Gun Twirler" of 1899, which preserves further evidence of a more interesting bit from Cheriff's act.

No, he's not "Arabian."

[streible-43573 · 21 August 2023]

The performer was Frank William Kissell. Born 1865 in Fort Edward, New York. Died 1939, Utica, New York.

All of his several Arabic and Arabic-sounding stage names were fabrications, as was most all of that character's backstory. He was not from "Arabia" or Egypt. Not Muslim. Not son of a king over 2 million people. Not an immigrant to the US. Not a speaker of 17 languages.

It's true Kissell, under these stage names -- Hadji L. Cheriff, Hadj Lessik, Hadj Cheriff ben Mahomet, Hadj Le Mahofode Cheriff -- performed with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show in the 1890s and earlier with the Barnum & Bailey Circus.

The name he added -- Lessik -- is his real surname backwards.

Before this Oct. 1894 film, he performed for the same Edison Black Maria kinetoscope camera in July. But that film is not known to survive.