From my studies of early films, it seems filmmakers at the turn of the 20th Century were fascinated with, perhaps more so than with any other subject, fire and firemen at work. That fascination began here, as with so many firsts in film history, in the "Black Maria" at the Edison Laboratories. The Edison Company, American Mutoscope, the Lumière Company and probably just about every other filmmaker took to making actuality films, or documentaries, of firemen putting out fires, or they staged fire scenes such as the one here. Some filmmakers became fire-engine chasers; in one film, "Atlantic City Fire Department" (1897), the camera was accidentally run over by a horse-drawn fire engine. In early, multi-shot fictional story films, firefighting remained a popular subject, such as in James Williamson's "Fire!" (1901) and Edwin S. Porter's "Life of an American Fireman"(1903).
The production values within these 50 feet of film from 1894 and within the cramped space of the "Black Maria" shanty are quite remarkable. In under a minute, four firefighters, one of which is on a ladder and another holding a hose spraying water, rescue two children from what spectators would assume to be the second story of a burning building located out of frame. (Of course, there was no two-story structure within the "Black Maria".) Smoke covers most of the background of the scene, except for, the careful viewer will notice, the "R" logo in the lower lefthand corner, which stands for Raff & Gammon, who funded this Edison Company production. This film must have been rather exciting to spectators peeking through the peepholes of the Kinetoscopes; in a way, "Fire Rescue Scene" was the 19th Century equivalent of the big action flick, complete with the special effect of smoke.
