In reviewing another Edison film made the same year (The Magician), I have pleaded for people not to patronise the past. Respect for the past means (at least) two things. It means appreciating that the context is not necessarily the same. Watching a film about thieves wielding a vacuum cleaner to comical effect, for example, made in the 1900s, one needs to appreciate that the vacuum cleaner was a new invention. But it also means treating the films made with a genuine critical eye (as the audiences themselves did) and making clear distinctions between films that are good and films are that are bad (or at any rate very much less good).
This film, like The Magician, was one of a series made by the Edison company in 1900. The are quite evidently intended to emulate to a certain extent the trick films being made at this time by the French pioneer Georges Méliès. They tend nowadays to be automatically attributed to Edwin S. Porter although there is, as far as I know, no very strong evidence to support this (the Library of Congress makes no such attribution).
The relevant Méliès films in this case are La Salle à manger (1899) and Le Repas fantastique (1900). The first of these, if it does survive, survives only in a rather poor copy which looks as though it may not be Méliès' original film (see my review of this title) but the latter exists in a presentable version and, while not amongst Méliès' best films, is a fairly representative example of his more pedestrian work.
The reviewer who suggests that Porter (if Porter it is) is attempting to do something a little different from Méliès is not wrong but those differences are almost entirely negative and make for a very dull and uninteresting film.
In the first place, Porter (or whoever made the film) is clearly not an experienced illusionist and deviser of spectacles in the way that Méliès was and was for quite some time before ever he made a film (many of his films area actually cinematic (but very distinctly cinematic) "remakes" of his own earlier stage spectacles). His notion of magic is rather limited to the caricatural production of birds and rabbits (in The Magician it appears to be a duck), a silly cliché that Méliès knew to avoid.
Secondly there is a kind of apparent "naturalism" in this series of sub-Méliès films (there are seven or eight of them altogether) but it is not really "naturalistic" acting; it is simply non-acting and rather inappropriate to the genre. Méliès and his British counterpart Walter R. Booth (for producer R. W. Paul) both had contacts with local music-halls and variety theatres and "borrowed" seasoned performers for their films and the difference is notable. In The Magician, for instance, a magician just comes on and does his act(the duck) but, like the diners and the waiter in this film, he is really just going through the motions in front of the camera. The notion of "over-acting" does not have much meaning in relation to this particular "non-realistic" genre of film and a rather lifeless execution of the required movements makes the films fall flat. The best of the US series are probably the two "Uncle Josh" films (Uncle Josh in a Spooky Inn and Uncle Josh's Nightmare)where the yokel is probably played by the stage-actor Charles "Daddy" Manley, who certainly plays the part in a 1902 "Uncle Josh" film (Uncle Josh at a Moving Picture Show).
Porter would go on to be an important director of films in very different genres but these early attempts to emulate the work of Méliès if they really are by Porter (which I think improbable)are really very poor.
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