First Post

For my blog post this week, I decided to skip the tangled web of discussion that Birth of a Nation and Within Our Gates brought up. I was actually much more interested in the early films we got the chance to view during our first "lab".

The very first experimentation with film was fascinating. I imagine the average American at that time thought the people pioneering the art were absolutely nuts; kind of the way people used to see Picasso's style. However, their bold venture into this new art form helped give the world something that would change it forever.

I thought The Dickson Experimental Sound Film, the very first short clip we viewed, was particularly moving. I know it sounds weird; what could be moving about a teensy clip where one guy screeches on the violin while two others awkwardly dance around? I think it was the very best clip out of all of the ones we saw. Instead of the stilted, over-dramatic acting we see in later films (think of that gem, A Trip to the Moon) we see a piece of American history. We get to peer back in time and take a genuine glance at three guys who really never imagined their images would be played back to a classroom full of college students over a century later.

The totally real portrayal of people from over a hundred years ago gives me goosebumps to watch. So much of what we see is a reenactment; actors posed for the scenes, given their lines, dressed down to the tiniest detail in "historically accurate" clothing. Here, we are truly seeing real people doing the things and being the people they really were at that time. The man on the violin absentmindedly tilts his head along with the music he plays, the two men dancing stumble awkwardly into each other, both trying to lead. At the end, a guy even walks into the scene behind the huge, conical "microphone". You would never see that in a movie today!

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that, in this film, you get a raw honesty that is totally left out in all of the other film clips and films we've seen so far (with the exception of Pack Train on Chilkoot Pass and San Francisco: Aftermath). I absolutely love that we have the privelege of seeing these men as they truly are, instead of actors dressed up like them in period clothing. We should consider ourselves lucky that, not only are we able to see this restoration due to the hard work of historical societies, but that the restoration we get to see is a beautifully awkward, casual, true scene of life in 1894.