1903 - Alice in Wonderland - Cecil Hepworth & Percy Stow

Thanks to Tim Burton’s now $1 billion grossing version of Alice in Wonderland, there has been a surge of interest in the first cinematic adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s literary classic. The one remaining print has been restored by the BFI and was made available to view online this March. Directed by two of the founders of British cinema, Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow, its original running time of twelve minutes made it the longest running British film to date.

Alice in Wonderland was clearly made for cinema goers who had already read the book, hence describing this version of Alice in Wonderland as a literary adaptation in the modern understanding of the term may be misleading (without prior knowledge of the books, deciphering the events of the film would be quite difficult). Given the film’s length, it would be better to describe it as a series of vignettes from the book. It is perhaps this aspect of the film’s organisation that gives it a peculiar and slightly disjointed feel.

Despite the BFI’s best efforts, the original reel of Alice in Wonderland was damaged to such an extent that the deterioration is quite clearly visible on the restored print. This however, only heightens the dreamlike atmosphere of the film. Combined with the fact that the film is not a ‘conventional narrative’, Alice in Wonderland can be seen as a forerunner for the works of surrealist filmmakers such as René Clair, Luis Buñuel and Jean Cocteau. 

The opening scene where Alice follows the rabbit down the hole (see above) is simple yet powerful. As more and more people flocked to the cinema during its formative years, they too would have felt an affinity with Alice as they wandered down the rabbit hole of this new and vibrant art form.

Alice in Wonderland is an enjoyable, charming but lightweight example of early cinema. There is a question mark as to whether the film would have preserved its legacy if it had not been the first adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. However, the film does stand on its own merits. For example, the penultimate scene with the procession of cards is light-hearted and amusing (see below).    

The influence of the Lumiere Brothers’ family ‘actualities’ (The Mad Hatter’s tea party) and Méliès visual trickery (when Alice is stuck in the hallway) are apparent on this film. It will be interesting to note how much of an effect their works had on directors in the noughties and teens of the 20^th Century.

Alice in Wonderland has a unique cinematic history – it has been ‘remade’ in eight different decades and will serve as a useful barometer of film’ progress over the years. Therefore many of these adaptations will be added to the Film: Ab Initio list.

1903 - The Great Train Robbery - Edwin S. Porter

The Great Train Robbery, directed by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Manufacturing Company in 1903, established film as an attractive and lucrative form of entertainment in the United States. The Great Train Robbery toured the country for several years as well as being the premier attraction at the opening of the first nickelodeon in 1905.

It is also considered to be film’s first major Western and is our earliest example of a film being loosely based on historical events. The film’s plot derives from Butch Cassidy’s gang robbing a train heading towards Wyoming for $5,000 in cash; interestingly, the film itself was actually shot in New Jersey. Such stories were already hugely popular with American audiences and were found in dime novels and stage melodramas.

The Great Train Robbery’s technical and historic importance outweighs its artistic merits. It is a film which made several groundbreaking innovations (such as crosscutting), but I would argue that certain aspects of its historical importance have been overstated. For example, it has been suggested that The Great Train Robbery is the first narrative film. Our chronological approach to viewing film history debunks this myth, as Méliès’ 1902 film Le Voyage dans la Lune is quite clearly a sustained narrative.

The Great Train Robbery is Michael Bay’s wet dream: an extended action set-piece that spans the entirety of the film with a few brief respites. The first few minutes do generate an element of suspense and intrigue, but this is soon lost in a scene which involves the robbing of the passengers. The scene is overlong and drawn out, suggesting that Mr. Porter was not the greatest of editors.

It is important to observe that the American understanding of what the duties of a director entailed differed drastically to what a filmmaker like Méliès understood of the same term. The excellent ‘The Oxford History of World Cinema’ draws out the contrast:

Despite his nominal position, Porter only controlled the technical aspects of filming and editing while other Edison employees with theatrical experience took charge of directing the actors and the mise-en-scene... George Méliès, who also owned his company, did everything short of actually crank the camera, writing the script, designing sets and costumes, devising trick effects and often acting.

This brings us to one of Film: Ab Initio’s key issues: collaborative effort vs. auteur’s vision. At this early point in film history, I would argue that the latter is more successful. But this discussion will become more complex as the years roll on.         

The brutality of the violence on display in The Great Train Robbery may be unapparent to the modern viewer, but surely scenes such as where one of the passengers tries to escape and was shot down by one of the robbers would have had quite an effect on the contemporary viewer.  

It must be noted that there are certain set-pieces that the viewer cannot help but admire. For example, the brief fight that takes place on top of the train is a well-shot (see above) and greatly increases the atmospheric tension of the film, as is the picturesque scene where the robbers mount their horses (see below), a scene that will be replicated ad infinitum in almost every Western that follows.

Much has been made of the film’s final shot, which involves the actor George Barnes firing his gun (see below) at the audience, the shot was even replicated at the end of Goodfellas. This would undoubtedly have had quite an effect on the contemporary audience, but I would yet again suggest that its importance and effectiveness have been overstated.

A comparison of this shot with The Lumiere Brothers’ Arrivee d'un train en gare a La Ciotat will illustrate this point. Both ‘scenes’ provoked a similar level of fear in their respective audiences. Yet from a filmmaker’s perspective, the latter work is far more impressive. As discussed in the Lumiere’s blog, the Lumiere Brothers’ choice of composition greatly increased the sense of awe at the train’s eventual arrival. The final shot of the The Great Train Robbery on the other hand, simply involves the actor firing a gun straight at the camera.  

The Great Train Robbery’s importance on this list will become retroactively apparent as we observe the influence it has had on future Westerns. For now though, this blog reasserts that its importance may have been overemphasised.