Sutro Baths, No. 1 (1897) User Reviews

To help you wade through this welter of confusion . . .

[oscaralbert · 5/10 · 25 February 2016]

. . . let me connect the dots in the only common sense explanation for how the information about Edison's SUTRO BATH films got so balled up. There are 2 different films, shot in the same general area, 5 weeks apart in 1897. At this time much of America was under Sharia-style law, so the male and female facilities were SEPARATE. The first Edison flick featured males, while the second zoomed in on the gals. The first was called plain old SUTRO BATHS by the Edison people, not knowing that popular demand would lead to a second, female film, which they confusingly titled (probably on purpose, so viewers would pay multiple times, never knowing which "peep show" was which) SUTRO BATHS No. 1. IMDb apparently views itself as the Vatican City of world film, so it ARBITRARILY has relabeled SUTRO BATHS as SUTRO BATHS, No. 1 and the five-weeks-later female SUTRO BATHS, No. 1 as SUTRO BATHS, No. 2. While the cataloging ethics of making such an unauthorized change AFTER a film has been in circulation for more than a century are highly questionable, someone at IMDb remembered that its "No. 2" originally was titled "No. 1," so they typed in their "Movie Connections" section for this bogus "No. 2" it was FOLLOWED by No. 1 (apparently because the IMDb #2 was labeled #1 before the IMDb #1 was, if you can follow this twisted logic). This is the sort of thing that's bound to happen when you take it upon yourself to mislabel things in an arbitrary, Willy-Nilly (or nihilistic) fashion.

A period piece

[James L. · 31 August 2000]

Curio period piece, by Edison. That said , it is basically footage of bathers going down an early water slide ( a 50 foot one , in San Fransisco). For anyone who's interested in obscure San Fransisco history , Thomas Edison, turn-of -the century swimming practice and wear, or the early waterslide. Hard to find .

Suntro Baths, No. 1 (1897)

[Michael_Elliott · 17 June 2016]

Suntro Baths, No. 1 (1897)

Since there's a "No. 1" in the title, here's a film that was shot various times. This one here basically takes place at a pool where a bunch of people are going down a large water slide. There are at least a dozen people who go down the slide one after another so safety obviously wasn't an issue. It certainly appears that the "action" was staged so that the movie could be filmed and for the most part it's slightly entertaining. Again, there's nothing ground-breaking going on but it gives you a real view of what these water parks looked like back in the day as well as what people wore to them.