Copycats: Anschütz Chronophotographs as Direct Source Materials for Early Edison Kinetoscope Films

References (50)

1. print. Because Anschütz himself mounted his series images in metal disks prepared to his order by Siemens & Halske, and because the latter was shipping disks and apparatus together to London, New York, Berlin, and other destinations, the correspondence between the two partners relied on standard "titles" to identify the requisite subjects included with a Schnellseher. Each machine was normally shipped with two disks, and further disks could be ordered. A full Anschütz-W erke-Verzeichnis of all subjects used in the Schnellseher is in preparation.
2. All references to Edison kinetoscope titles are from Charles Musser, Edison Motion Pictures, 1890 - 1900. An Annotated Filmography. Washington, D. C. / Pordenone, 1997: Smithsonian Institution Press / Le Giornate del cinema muto. Here, Musser No. 18, pp. 85 -86.
3. On the opening of this first public commercial exhibition of the kinetoscope, see Paul Spehr, "Movies and the Kinetoscope", in André Gaudreault, ed., American Cinema 1890 -1909 (New Brunswick / London, 2009: Rutgers University Press), pp. 22-3. See also Gordon Hendricks, The Kinetoscope (New York, 1966: The Beginnings of the American Film), pp. 56-60; and Charles Musser, The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 (New York / Toronto, 1990: Charles Scribner's Sons), p. 81.
4. Dr. Richard Neuhaus "Projection von Reihen -Aufnahmen", in Photographische Rundschau, 1895, 1
5. Heft, p. 27. This was a review of the series' use in a public exhibition of the Projecting Electrotachyscope from 22 February 1895 onwards in the main auditorium of the Old Reichstag building, Leipzigerstrasse 4, Berlin. Because this text is central to my arguments in this article, I give here the complete passage in the original German: "Unter den von Anschütz vorgeführten Reihenaufnahmen ist das Einseifen beim Barbier von geradezu überwältigender Komik: Ein Herr sitzt zurückgelehnt auf dem Stuhle; vor ihm steht der mit Seife und Pinsel bewaffnete Barbier und waltet seines Amtes. Seitwärts zieht der Gehilfe das Messer auf dem Streichriemen ab. Das langsame Hin-und Herfahren des Messers auf dem Riemen, die Körperbewegung des einseifenden Barbiers und das Fingerspiel das Eingeseiften sind von unübertrefflicher Naturtreue."
6. Charles Musser confirms the regular presence of this film at Edison's laboratory, commenting that The Barber Shop "was a film that visiting dignitaries and the press saw when passing through the Edison Laboratory during the winter of 1893-94." Musser, Edison Motion Pictures [Note 15], p. 26.
7. "Thomas Edison's Latest Contrivance", in the New York Herald, 11 March 1894, p2, cit. Musser, Edison Motion Pictures, p. 85.
8. Northern Queensland Herald, 4 September 1895, cit. Ray Phillips, Edison's Kinetoscope and its Films. A History to 1896. (Trowbridge, W iltshire, 1997: Flicks Books), p. 120. The text continues at length with the description of the waiting customers and their newspaper.
9. There is another point to be considered here amongst the very early kinetoscope productions. W hile the viewing apparatus, the kinetoscope, is known to have a limited capacity, some 40 or 42 feet of film looped over rollers, in the case of the recording apparatus, the vertical-feed camera, the kinetograph, had in theory no such physical limits. It is eminently possible, at a time before there were any habits or patterns to filmmaking, releasing, and distributing, that a long shooting session on the kinetograph would simply be chopped up into shorter lengths to fit the kinetoscope; this might be especially appropriate behaviour with a subject that was as elaborately strewn with settings, properties and players as The Barber Shop. And in the end, it is a second portion (or third?) of the overall shoot that has survived in this case. We just do not know enough about nascent production habits at the Black Maria to determine why a full 40 feet of The Barber Shop is preserved but does not at all match two contemporaneous descriptions of the film. Perhaps this case will motivate some research into alternative production/releasing habits at Edison.
10. Spehr, op. cit., p. 89.
11. Spehr, op. cit., p. 90.
12. I have argued elsewhere that all of the moving picture experimenters -all of them, even the most seemingly isolated workers -knew something about each others' work, in one way or another, and this present article is yet another example of how historians of early cinema need to cast their nets very widely, and, indeed, internationally, to pick up the crosscurrents and ripples of influence that were omnipresent at the time amongst the web of inventors, showmen, and entrepreneurs interested in moving picture work. See Deac Rossell, Serpentine Dance: Inter-National Connections in Early Cinema (Occasional Papers in Modern Languages, Culture and Society, No. 1, 1999. Published by the Department of European Languages, Goldsmith's College, University of London).
13. Siemens Archive, files LN238 and 239, passim for discussions of the construction of the coin- operating systems. Machines for London were equipped with penny mechanisms, German machines with 10 Pfennnig mechanisms. Siemens & Halske, who did all of the development work on this mechanism, were at one point quite cross with Anschütz when he submitted a patent in his own name for their work.
14. Used extensively at the turn of the century and through W W I, this legendary 7-note musical call and response is still today deeply imprinted in American (and W estern) culture. One early musical appearance is in the 1899 song At a Darktown Cakewalk by Charles Hale. So Dickson's sign about a "wonder" and "a nickel" is very specifically a reflection on something that exists outside the scene being represented: the Anschütz Electrical W onder [Schnellseher] and its price of admission [viewing].
15. I am including Heise here -and throughout the article -even though some scholars, Paul Spehr in particular, have suggested that he was an assistant to Dickson who added little of substance to the kinetoscope productions. But as Musser suggests, "...the invention of the Edison motion picture system involved two collaborative pairings -Edison/Dickson and Dickson/Heise....Collaborations, based on partnership practices, seem to have been crucial to the development of motion picture technology. Many of the weighty debates about these inventions are disputes over which member of a collaborative pair deserves credit. This seems counterproductive, insensitive to the nature of collaboration itself." Musser, Edison Motion Pictures (Note 15), p. 25. While not trying to overstate the case for Heise, I wish to be inclusive in this matter. I also recognize that amid the many tasks involved in setting up the elaborate scene of The Barber Shop the sign under consideration here might well have appeared simply as evidence of the sense of humor of one of the partners, or of one collaborator's skill as a painter, or for almost any minimal reason.
16. See Gordon Hendricks, The Edison Motion Picture Myth (Berkeley / Los Angeles, 1961: University of California Press), pp. 84 -89, in part quoting W. K. L. Dickson himself in The Century Magazine, June 1894.
17. The New York Times, 16 March 1890, p. 16. The men leaping and athletic sports were undoubtedly Anschütz's well-known sequences of one gymnast leaping over another with the aid of a springboard, a javelin thrower, and an athlete hurling a large rock. The disks mentioned by the Times largely conform to Anschütz's normal selection of publicity/press materials and does not include any of his entertainment subjects. It is not known if the entertainment disks were available for subsequent demonstrations. 30. ibid., p. 16
18. Marta Braun, Picturing Time [n. 1], p. 189. Also, Paul Spehr, The Man Who Made Movies: W. K. L. Dickson (New Barnet, 2008: John Libbey Publishers), p. 145 & 179.
19. Edison may well have met Anschütz during this Berlin trip, given his prior look at the Schnellseher in Paris and Anschütz's close relations with Siemens, apart from his high social standing with the Kaiser. Edison filed his fourth motion picture caveat at the US Patent Office in November, 1889, just a month after his return from Europe and his visits in Paris and Berlin. This caveat has been long thought to have been had relinquished his concession to exhibit the kinetoscope (which was not ready) at the Fair on 7 April 1893 (Spehr, op. cit., p. 275). The organizing Committee of the fair was well informed and worked quickly in this matter.
20. I can find no record of Dickson or Heise visiting the Chicago Exposition.
21. Thomas Armat, "My Part in the Development of the Motion Picture Projector", in Journal of the SMPE, Vol. 24, March 1935, reprinted in Raymond Fielding, ed., A Technological History of Motion Pictures and Television (Berkeley, 1967: University of California Press), pp. 17 -22, here p. 17.
22. Or any comparison with the slightly later Edison film Wrestling Match (Musser No. 29), still made very early, by early April, 1894.
23. Beginning in 1888, Anschütz made more than 100 sets of chronophotographs of dancers, intended to be used by dance instructors and pupils. The first notice of this ongoing project appeared in the photographic press in early 1891, but there had been reportedly no commercial return from these images and the project was abandoned. No images are known to survive, although is possible that the entertainment disks involving dancers (Tänzerin, Zwei Tänzerinnen) are survivors from this early material. There is also hardly a reference in print (and no surviving images) from a long commercial series that Anschütz undertook in 1890-91 under a commission from the Deutsche Post of the work of the post office, including series on letter carriers, post coaches, mail sorting, and other typical operations of the post. These series were exhibited in the main Berlin post office from 1891; the Schnellseher itself survives, but none of the disks.
24. Library of Congress Press Release, December 16, 2015. The release lists the 25 films added to the Registry in 2015 by the National Film Preservation Board in consultation with Library staff. "Selecting a film for the National Film Registry recognizes its importance to cinema and America's cultural and artistic history," said Acting Librarian of Congress David Mao. "The Registry is an invaluable way to advance public awareness of the richness, creativity, and variety of our nation's film heritage." The full press release can be found at: http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2015/15-216.html
25. Musser, op. cit., p. 87.
26. Spehr, op. cit., pp. 323-35 is very complete on the gestation of this project, although I think there is one more layer that needs discussion, the impact of the Anschütz disk on all involved.
27. Barnet Phillips, "The Record of a Sneeze", Harper's Weekly, 24 March 1894, p. 280, cit. Musser, op. cit., p. 88.
28. Spehr, op. cit., pp. 324-5 has the details of Phillips's analysis.
29. Spehr, op. cit., p. 325.
30. In my own mind's eye reconstruction of the Anschütz subject, for which there is still hope a more substantial description (but probably not an image) might be found, I do not see the sneezer's right hand holding an handkerchief and waving it around. I imagine this to be Dickson's addition, like the newspaper reader in The Barber Shop, where Dickson was able to display the advantages of working with longer duration imagery on celluloid strips. Even in this brief 'non-film' he did have 81 frames, over three times the number available through chronophotography's 24. My mental impression of the Anschütz work is brief, direct, and immediate. It might be described as much more an involuntary reaction than the Dickson "performance."
31. Spehr, op. cit., pp. 321-3. Ironically, in this same passage, in one of my elisions, Spehr quotes the entire sign visible in The Barber Shop, "The Latest W onder, Shave and Hair Cut for a nickel," without at all realising the text's origin or meaning. This is in fact perfectly understandable, since the history of the Anschütz Schnellseher in America, its availability and use, its marketing and nomenclature, and its entertainment disks has been virtually unknown to all early cinema scholars. Much, much work remains to be done, and we really, really need to know what the "Am. Inst. Dur. Produkts" was that absorbed 12 Schnellsehers in New York City in the Autumn of 1892.
32. There are no precedents yet known in the Anschütz entertainment series for either Blacksmithing Scene or Horse Shoeing, although it is certain that there are more Anschütz entertainment series yet to be identified. The potentially most intriguing Anschütz subject here is Zwei Zimmerleute früstückend (Two Carpenters Breakfasting), a series from the same period in early 1890. If a description, or image, of this comedy is found that includes a little hearty drinking in the workshop early in the morning, as might be imagined as one thinks about how the subject could become a comic entertainment, then there could well be a connection to the Dickson titles, particularly Blacksmithing Scene.
33. See Michelle Aubert and Jean-Claude Seguin, La Production cinématographique des Frères Lumière (Paris, 1996: Bibliothèque du Film / Editions Mémoires de cinéma), p. 485. REFERENCES
34. Anon., "Photographic Travellers. No. 7. Arthur Schwarz", in The Practical Photographer, January 1, 1893, pp. 8 -9
35. Anon., Photographische Korrespondenz (Vienna, 1890)
36. Anon., Photographische Nachrichten (Berlin, 1890)
37. Anon., Tagesanzeiger (der Internationale Elektrotechnische Ausstellung), No. 85, 8 August 1891 (Frankfurt am Main, 1891)
38. Anon., "Seen in the Tachyscope", The New York Times, March 16, 1890, p. 16
39. Michelle Aubert and Jean-Claude Seguin, La Production cinématographique des Frères Lumière (Paris, 1996: Bibliothèque du Film (BIFI) / Editions Mémoires de cinéma).
40. Gordon Hendricks, The Edison Motion Picture Myth. Berkeley, 1961: University of California Press. Gordon Hendricks, The Kinetoscope. New York, 1966: The Beginnings of the American Film.
41. Charles Musser, Edison Motion Pictures, 1890 -1900. An Annotated Filmography. W ashington, D. C. / Pordenone, 1997: Smithsonian Institution Press / Le Giornate del cinema muto.
42. Richard Neuhaus, "Projection von Reihen -Aufnahmen", in Photographische Rundschau, 1895, 1. Heft, pp. 25 -7
43. Deac Rossell, Faszination der Bewegung: Ottomar Anschütz zwischen Photogaphie un Kino (Frankfurt am Main / Basle, 2001: Stroemfeld / Roter Stern). [= KINtop Schriften 6]
44. Deac Rossell, Serpentine Dance: Inter-National Connections in Early Cinema (Occasional Papers in Modern Languages, Culture and Society, No. 1, 1999. Published by the Department of European Languages, Goldsmith's College, University of London). [This department no longer exists, nor does its fugitive publications programme. A copy can be found on my pages at www.academia.edu]
45. Terry Ramsaye, A Million and One Nights (New York, 1926: Simon & Schuster)
46. Siemens Archive, Munich, Germany, file 35-65/LN238, Schriftwechsel des Charlottenburger W erks betr. Schnellseher, 1891 -1892.
47. Siemens Archive, Munich, Germany, file 35-65/LN239, Schriftwechsel des Charlottenburger W erks mit Ottomar Anschütz betr. Schnellseher, 1893 -4
48. Siemens Archive, Munich, Germany, file 35-65/LN240, Schriftwechsel des Charlottenburger W erks betr. Schnellseher. Anschütz, Filmtechnik, Gerat, Bestellwesen; 1895
49. Paul Spehr, The Man Who Made Movies: W. K. L. Dickson (New Barnet, 2008: John Libbey Publishers)
50. Frederick A. Talbot, Moving Pictures. How They are Made and Worked. London, 1912: William Heinemann. [also, "entirely re-written" edition of 1923, Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott]