This is a 40-second long Edison Company kinetoscope short. Four men play out the scene. One is sitting in a barber's chair getting a shave and a haircut. Another is the barber working on him. The third and fourth flank the barber on either side of the frame, positioned in front of the barber chair and cabinet. The scene actually lasts only 20 seconds, but is repeated in full.
Some sources date The Barber Shop to mid-1893 or earlier, and some sources consider it to be "pre-commercial" (that is, prior to an intention for the film to be exhibited commercially on the kinetoscope). While this may indeed be the case, it's unusual in that The Barber Shop is clearly a staged scene; one that is more complex than some of the commercial Edison Company shorts, such as Sandow (1894) and The Cock Fight (1894).
This is one of the more successful shorts of the era. While it presents a scene that ostensibly might be an actuality (actualities were something like cinematographic records of everyday scenes), closer examination reveals that the scenario is extremely artificial and directed. For example, there are props that are arranged in exact spots to create maximum effect in the frame of the camera. More notably, each "actor's" motions appear to be precisely planned and directed; they're almost choreographed. The actions provide a fascinating contrapuntal mise-en-scene--each performer is constantly moving, and even inanimate motion is incorporated by way of the smoke from the pipe.
The two men flanking the customer stand up at one point and move to the middle of the frame, blocking the view of the barber and customer. All of this complicated motion allows for a repetition that most people do not notice on a first viewing (it took me a couple viewings to notice--I didn't catch it until I switched to a more analytical mode), despite the fact that the man on the left is obviously taking off his coat and hat and sitting down once again. You don't notice because your eye is busy darting around the frame, trying to take all of it in at once.
The staging is similar to Glenroy Brothers (Comic Boxing) (1894), but more complex. In the Glenroy Brothers short, the "rear guard" sit motionless, more props than persons. The Barber Shop's approach to creating a "realistic scene" involving a number of people has been much emulated in later films, down to the present, and was subsequently honed artistically to a point that many people no longer noticed the artificiality of the "background action".
