Smoke and Mirrors

Many of the films from 1909 used trick cinematography, such as the matte shot in D.W. Griffith's Those Awful Hats or the stop-camera and double exposure techniques that create Puck's magic effects in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

These early filmmakers pushed the limits of their technology in innovative directions, but they were movie makers dabbling in magic; their primitive special effects were fun, but sometimes gimmicky and distracting. In contrast, Georges Méliès was a magician first, and his techniques are executed with the polish and timing of an experienced stage performer, as demonstrated in his film The Devilish Tenant.

The Devilish Tenant


Another significant special effects film was Princess Nicotine. What's unique about this film is it's use of old-fashioned stage magic in addition to the imaginative film tricks. The fairy on the desktop is not super-imposed using a matte shot or double exposure; there's an actual mirror on the desk with an actor playing the fairy at some distance on the other side of the camera to create the illusion that she's small.

Princess Nicotine


If you want to watch more films that feature trick cinematography from 1909:

Those Awful Hats - the "Please silence your cell phones" equivalent 100 years ago.
A Midsummer Night's Dream - an early adaptation of the Shakespeare play.
Airship Destroyer - A remarkably prescient speculation on how the new airships may be used in war.

These films have survived and can be viewed and/or downloaded on YouTube, Google Video or The Internet Archive.

A CORNER ON WHEAT

In this 14 minute movie, D.W. Griffith depicts three separate but connected story lines. The main story follows a commodities speculator as he maneuvers to gain a corner on wheat. It is told in parallel with the story of a baker and his customers who have to pay more for their bread. These are bookended by images of a poor farmer and his family sowing seeds.



Griffith contrasts the scenes of the mogul's festivities with the hardships caused by his actions by cross cutting them with scenes of the baker's customers. The effect is a bit ham-fisted by today's standards, but the technique was innovative at the time (as was almost all film technique at this early stage).

An artistic flourish that I thought was notable occurs at the 8 minute mark; it's a 15 second scene of a motionless breadline that is so still you have to watch closely to see that it wasn't actually a photo. I also like how the scenes of the farmer sowing seeds is an intentional reference to the painting, The Sower, by Jean-François Millet.

The novel the film is based on, The Pit, by Frank Norris was published in 1903, but it was the Panic of 1907 that would make the film seem timely to its audience. The panic was triggered by a failed attempt to corner the market on copper. The subsequent crisis led to the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913.

1909

Time Capsule Year: 1909

February 12 - The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded, commemorating the 100th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln's birth. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination."


March 4 - William Howard Taft succeeds Theodore Roosevelt as President of the United States. The popular president Teddy Roosevelt opted not to seek another term in the 1908 elections. Instead he promoted the candidacy of his Secretary of War, William Taft.

March 18 - Einar Dessau uses a short-wave radio transmitter, becoming the first radio broadcaster.

March 24 - In his first Post-Presidential excursion, Teddy Roosevelt embarks on an African Safari sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic Society. The trip is a popular sensation.

August 10 - Alice Huyler Ramsey drives into San Francisco amid great fanfare after leaving Manhattan 59 days earlier and becomes the first woman to drive across the country.

Auguste Marie François Beernaert and Paul Henri d'Estournelles de Constant are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in promoting international arbitration in foreign affairs.

Orville and Wilbur Wright spent the year demonstrating their flying machines and setting several aviation speed and distance milestones. One passenger in a demonstration in Italy in April was a cameraman who filmed the first motion picture from an airplane. That summer, they were invited to the White House to receive awards from President Taft. In October, Wilbur flew for over 30 minutes up and down the Hudson river and circling the Statue of Liberty in front of a million spectators at Manhattan's Hudson-Fulton celebrations.

1909 in Popular Music

"Take Me Up With You, Dearie" by Billy Murray


"Down in Jungle Town (Parody Version)" by Nat M. Wills


"Let's Go Into A Picture Show" by Byron G. Harlan


The above tracks come from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project. The phonograph cylinder was the most popular format for recorded music from the turn of the century until the disc format became more popular in the 1910s.

1899

Time Capsule Year: 1899

Scott Joplin publishes the Maple Leaf Rag. It would become his most popular piece, one of the most popular ragtime songs of all time, and the first instrumental to sell a million copies. It sparked a cultural appreciation of ragtime music that lasted through the next decade.

On February 6, The United States Senate ratified the peace treaty officially ending the Spanish Amercan War.

Falsely accused French officer Alfred Dreyfus is retried and pardoned as a result of the controversy caused by Emile Zola's J'Accuse.

Newsboys in Brooklyn go on strike in response newspaper prices going up 10 cents a bundle.




The Second Boer War breaks out between the British empire and the Boer republics of South Africa.

Gold is found in Nome Alaska; it is the first of two major gold rushes in Alaska.

Among the future luminaries of film that are born in 1899: Alfred Hitchcock, Fred Astaire, Humphrey Bogart, and James Cagney.



Film Highlights of 1899:

A Turn of the Century Illusionist



Georges Méliès always seems to be a few years ahead of his time. Here we see his typically playful style as he pushes the limits of the technology he's using.

King John



Notable for being earliest adaptation of Shakespeare on film. This is the last of four scenes, and the only one that survives.

Admiral Dewey Landing at Gibraltar



One of over a dozen films the Edison Co. made of the Spanish-American War admiral over the course of the year.

ERASERHEAD

Humans are essentially wet and gooey. Our bodies contain up to 60% water, and our biological processes, from digestion to circulation to reproduction, all basically involve slippery organs slushing soupy liquids from place to place. And although we're often too vain to acknowledge it, we all leave a trail of oily fingerprints, stray nose hairs, clipped toe nails, and dead skin cells everywhere we go. Civilization could be defined by everything that tries to conceal our basically messy nature: band-aids, underwear, deodorant, electric shavers, etc.

In David Lynch's Eraserhead, the rigid facade of smooth surfaces and right angles fits awkwardly over the undulating globs of flesh that make up the basis of our biology. A man and woman falling in love, having sex, and raising a baby, should be the most natural thing in the world, but in this movie, it's monstrously repugnant.

Early in the film, our protagonist, Henry, accepts an invitation to dinner with his girlfriend and her parents. All the social implications and arbitrary etiquette create an itchy discomfort. This mood is permeated by the sound of the family's puppies suckling; loudly demonstrating how uncomplicated the basic act of eating ought to be. The main course is man made chickens, presumably manufactured by white-coated technicians in an antiseptic laboratory instead of farmers with dirty fingernails or hunters with blood up to their elbows. Appropriately, the mechanical cuckoo clock signals when it is permissible to eat.

The father, is the only character not alienated from his nature. As a plumber, he's not fooled by the my-shit-don't-stink pretense of the rest of society. He's "put every damn pipe in this neighborhood", he says, and he's seen it change "from pastures to the hell-hole it is now". Every time his conversation veers toward his body - his bad knees, or his numb left arm - he is quickly shushed by his wife.

According to Eraserhead, we have more in common with the primordial ooze we crawled out of than the civilized society we pretend to live in.

Time Capsule Year: 1977

Academy Award for Best Picture Winner:
Annie Hall

Cannes Golden Palm Winner:
Padre Padrone

National Film Register:
Star Wars
Annie Hall
Powers Of Ten
Killer of Sheep

Time Magazine Person Of The Year:
Anwar Sadat

Nobel Peace Prize:
Amnesty International

Timeline of News Events:
January 20 - Jimmy Carter inaugurated as 39th President of the United States.
January 23 - Television mini-series Roots airs.
June 7 - Anita Bryant's "Save Our Children" crusade successfully repeals Miami-Dade County's gay rights ordinance, leading gay activist to launch a nationwide boycott of Florida Citrus for whom she advertised.
July 13 - A blackout in NYC lasts 25 hours and leads to looting and disorder.
August 10 - Serial killer David Berkowitz (aka Son of Sam) is arrested in New York. (see Summer Of Sam)
August 16 - Elvis Presley Dies.
September 12 - South African activist Steve Biko dies in police custody. (see Cry Freedom)
October 1 - Pele plays his last professional soccer game as member of the New York Cosmos (see Once In A Lifetime)
October 20 - 3 members of the rock group, Lynyrd Skynyrd, die when their chartered plane crashes.
November 19 - Anwar Sadat becomes the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel.

In Queue:
Annie Hall
Padre Padrone
Saturday Night Fever
The Late Show
New York, New York
Amar Akbar Anthony
Slap Shot
Soldier Of Orange
The Duellist
Allegro Non Troppo
Eraserhead
Kentucky Fried Movie
The Consequence
Equus

MIA on DVD:
Killer Of Sheep
Madame Rosa
A Special Day

Already Seen:
Star Wars
Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
Suspiria
The American Friend
High Anxiety
The Hobbit
Oh, God!
Jubilee
Semi-Tough
Powers of Ten

Top 10 Movies of 1967

1. Point Blank - Instead of a muscle-flexing line-growling action hero, Lee Marvin's revenge obsessed thug is more menacing for his economy of movement and relative silence. And director John Boorman gives this ultra-cool (and ultra-violent) vengeance film a non-linear new wave treatment that leaves enough ambiguity to invite an intriguing supernatural interpretation.


2. Le Samourai - Jean-Pierre Melville's film introduces a meticulous hit man, played by Alain Delon, who unexpectedly invokes our sympathy as an extremely competent professional whose attention to detail is so impressive we almost forget how unsavory those details are. Our respect is validated when his basic decency is revealed in the film's unforgettable ending. Also, check out Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai; a film that seems to be directly influenced by this one.

3. Cool Hand Luke - A fiercely independent prisoner bucks authority everywhere he encounters it (appropriately, he is incarcerated for vandalizing parking meters), first he challenges his alpha-male prison mate, then the prison bosses, and ultimately, God himself. Each defiant action, both successful and failed (mostly failed), earn him the admiration and loyalty of his fellow prisoners. Biblical allusions that liken him to both Moses and Jesus suggest a sort of anarchist Messiah, or a Christ-as-Libertarian parable.

4. Reflections In A Golden Eye - A year after Liz Taylor played the bratty, defiantly trampy wife in the overwrought Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, she played a similar role in John Huston's depiction of repressed sexuality and dysfunctional marriage. The ensemble of quirky characters (the tramp, the closet case, the nut case, the voyeur, and the eunuch) keeps the story so lurid that the promise of murder in the opening scene is quickly forgotten (one of several similarities between this film and American Beauty).

5. In Cold Blood - A near-documentary recreation of a well-documented murder of an entire family. It's disturbingly immersive; enough to make me question the ethics of watching it. Is it really appropriate for this very real atrocity be offered up as entertainment? Is it insensitive to the friends and family of the victims for us to be rehashing every sensational gory aspect of the crime? Maybe so, maybe not, but no other film has ever brought me to this place, albeit a chilly and unpleasant place.

6. The Young Girls of Rochefort - Jacques Demy's unapologetically romantic old-school musical is a love letter to the very same cheery, brightly-colored Hollywood tradition that his contemporaries in the French New Wave (including his wife Agnes Varda) react against. Ballet influenced choreography and light jazz give the standard formula a classy and unmistakably French flair - sort of like what Cirque du Soleil does for Vegas glitz.

7. Play Time - Few filmmakers have a cinematic voice as unique and distinctive as Jacques Tati's. It's physical comedy that unfolds at a deliberate and rhythmic pace with little or no dialogue. The gags are often subtle, or develop slowly over time. Play Time is set in a modern Paris, and Tati's protagonist, Mr. Hulot, is a throwback to a simpler era who is baffled by the alien world he finds himself wandering through. It makes a good companion to Chaplin's Modern Times.

8. Two For The Road - As The Graduate and Bonnie And Clyde ushered in a new generation of movie-making, Stanley Donen's innovative romantic comedy proved that the old guard wasn't entirely irrelevant yet. It features standard classic movie elements: it's shot on exotic European locales with glamorous A-List movie stars, the banter is quick and witty, and Audrey Hepburn's designer fashions are always crisp even while road tripping across Europe. Despite its breeziness, it has some insightful things to say about the way real life married couples interact, and it demonstrates this brilliantly through clever non-chronological editing.

9. The Graduate - This influential coming-of-age story is somehow dated and timeless at the same time. The conventional wisdom of the time was that this film heralded a new generation's rejection of their parent's out-dated values and hypocrisies. 40 years later, this same generation is working in plastics, and driving their SUVs to their homes in the suburbs. But this doesn't invalidate the movie; it just proves that the alienation and insecurities of youth are not unique to Boomers.

10. How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying - A fun and surprisingly cynical take on corporate culture. Set on the same campy sixties planet that Austin Powers came from, and featuring some typically jazzy choreography by Bob Fosse, and a pitch-perfect comic performance by Robert Morse as the naive-yet-scheming J. Pierpont Finch (that's F-I-N-C-H).