Surrealism begins? - 1906 - Dream of a Rarebit Fiend - Edwin S. Porter

There is a lot more to Edwin S. Porter’s oeuvre than just The Great Train Robbery. Dream of a Rarebit Fiend may well have been another forerunner for the surrealist movement. As mentioned in an earlier post, The 1903 version of Alice in Wonderland presented the audience with moments from Carroll’s work as she went down the rabbit hole which hinted at later works of surrealist film-making. In Dream of a Rarebit Fiend, the transition between the waking state and dreaming is more hallucinatory and therefore more interesting and more explicit from a surrealist perspective.

Whether or not this was his intention is debatable. Dream of a Rarebit Fiend was based on a comic strip of the same name by Windsor McKay (see above) that ran in the Evening Telegraph from 1904-1914. The strip was the modern equivalent of a medieval morality play; it warned its readers against the perils of overindulgence. McKay set the majority of the strip in the main character’s dreams, thus allowing him to probe an imaginary world free from physical laws.

Unfortunately, we cannot discover what particular element of McKay’s comic attracted Porter to this project. I would suggest, however, that authorial intention can often be misleading and limiting when attempting to read any form of art.

But before beginning a discussion in relation to the surrealist sections of the film, we must not overlook the opening scene. In this scene, we encounter the film’s protagonist devouring his rarebit and guzzling one of many beers on the table (see above). Here we have film’s earliest example of gluttonous grotesquery – it is really quite hard to watch, particularly when he spits out some of his beer. The director is deliberately establishing a protagonist who the audience has little or no sympathy for, his subsequent suffering is welcomed.
As he exits the restaurant and the world around him starts to spin as he approaches a lamppost, we are given film’s first example of what the Russian Formalists termed defamiliarisation:

The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar,’ to make forms difficult to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. (Shklovsky) 

The crucial distinction here is the discrepancy between perception and reality. Film will allow us to portray dreams in a manner which does make it “increase the difficulty and length of perception”, in a manner unique to this particular art form. Whereas a painting may evoke a particular image from a dream (see Dali’s Dream brought on by a bee flying through a pomegranate, one second before waking up below) and writing may evoke images that we can nurture and embellish in our imaginations, film can provide its audience with the entirety of a dream in a particular physical space where we expect to see a representation of reality.

In the latter moments of the film, such as where the protagonist’ bed is flying through the city, it is clear that the protagonist is dreaming. But at the moment where he approaches the lamppost, the two worlds amalgamate with one another, and it is at this moment that the initial defamiliarisation occurs. This is also the film’s most exhilarating moment. The energy of the protagonist combines with the dizzying whirling of his surroundings to draw the audience into his drunken revelry and subsequent dreaming.

The film has clearly taken some of its ideas directly from Méliès’ work from this period. For example, when the protagonist is being attacked by what appear to be devils as he sleeps (see above), they appear to be reminiscent of the devil in Méliès’ 1905 film Le Diable Noir. Dream of a Rarebit Fiend makes the breadth of Méliès work clearer; his discovery and implementation of ‘trick’ film-making not only heavily influenced all science fiction film but also the representation of dreams (and blurred drunkenness) in films.

To conclude however, Porter’s own diverse cinematic achievements must be highlighted. Porter is film’s first directorial chameleon and seems to be comfortable in any genre he dabbles in. As discussed in the post on The Great Train Robbery, he may not have had the creative freedom that Melies enjoyed, yet he still managed to make technically and cinematically important films that helped shape American cinema.

1904 - How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns - Edwin S. Porter

The wonderfully titled How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns is a film deserving of greater critical attention (as I suspect many of the film’s from ‘the Forgotten Decade’ shall be).

The opening scene of How a French Nobleman Got a Wife Through the New York Herald Personal Columns (which shall now be referred to as A French Nobleman) is particularly impressive and ranks with anything covered on this list so far. It is the first time that we are presented with a degree of psychological depth in regards to a character. It is mostly of a comic nature, as the Frenchman checks his newspaper with some glee and attaches his boutonniere (a word I only discovered by watching this film – does anyone still wear boutonnieres?) to his jacket. But what stands out, particularly after multiple viewings, is the use of the mirror in this scene.

When the character starts reading the paper, the placing of the mirror allows us to capture both sides of his face. This simple piece of visual trickery automatically gives the Frenchman more depth as we are given a deeper impression of his figure and character, which appears to be pleasant, eccentric and aristocratic. The Frenchman then turns towards the mirror and ties his boutonniere and appears to have a brief conversation with himself. Here we have film’s first (and probably shortest) soliloquy; it is a highly effective narrative device. Whereas previously we had the Lumiere brothers’ workers in Lyon unable to avoid staring straight into the camera, Méliès the magician communicating directly with the audience, and The Great Train Robbery presenting us with scenes you may expect to find on at a local theatre, it is the unique intimacy of observing a private moment such as this that makes the audience collective voyeurs. This unique of aspect of film will be developed and furthered over its history.

The second scene opens with a simple but beautifully composed shot: the Frenchman awaits his future bride outside Grant’s Tomb in New York. Greeting each woman with a bow deeper than Obama’s own efforts during his first trip to Japan, the scene’s humour expands with each woman’s appearance and peaks as the women surround him and he finally decides to run away.

The majority of the remainder of the film involves these women chasing him through a variety of landscapes (for example, see above), giving birth to our first extended chase scene and undoubtedly influencing Buster Keaton’s later film Seven Chances (see below). Unlike Keaton’s film, the joy and comedy of the chase disperses as it is far too long. As with Porter’s earlier effort The Great Train Robbery, A French Nobleman would have benefited from some heavy editing work. It is frustrating because the excellent build up of the film’s opening two scenes disperses around half way through the chase scene.

A French Nobleman was an Edison Studio remake of the Biograph film entitled Personal – both films were made in 1904. A French Nobleman provides a useful insight into the developing rivalry between these two studios as well signalling a significant shift in the contemporary audience’s taste.

The success of Le Voyage dans la Lune and The Great Train Robbery (which, was pirated by the Edison Studio) signalled a shift from non-fiction films, such as the Lumiere’s actualities, to short-length fiction films. (A similar tectonic shift, this time from short-length to feature films, would occur only a decade later).

In response to these successes, Biograph released a number of popular short-length feature films, which could only be viewed on their exhibition circuits. Just as Edison had pirated Méliès’ Le Voyage Dans Le Lune to great success, he had told his director Edwin S. Porter to re-make films such as Personal (a year later, he would go a step further and steal Personal’s director Wallace McCutcheon from Biograph). Biograph decided to sue Edison Studios for copyright infringement, but they lost their case.

Unfortunately, I do not have access to the original, so I am unable to provide any details on how this film compares to Personal.

The final scene of the film provides the viewer with some symmetry, as the Frenchman once again looks into a mirror, only on this occasion it is a brief glimpse of his reflection in a river. A French Nobleman is a clever film, it closes out the film nicely and enhances my belief that the film deserves more attention.

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.