1898 – Santa Claus

Directed by: George Albert Smith

While Méliès experimented with the double exposure technique in films such as Un homme de têtes / The Four Troublesome Heads (1898), George Albert Smith did the same across the Channel in The Mesmerist (1898) and Photographing a Ghost (1898). In Santa Claus, he used the technique to simultaneously show a child sleeping and Santa Claus climbing down the chimney, creating cinema’s earliest known example of parallel action. It also marks one of the earliest depictions of Santa Claus in film.

Bibliography

Brooke, M. (n.d.). ‘Santa Claus (1898)’, BFI Screenonline. Available at: http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/725468/index.html [Accessed: 3 January 2022].

Casey, K. (2013). ‘Film Review: G.A. Smith’s Santa Claus (1898)’, The Totality. Available at: http://www.the-totality.com/2013/05/film-review-ga-smiths-santa-claus-1898.html [Accessed: 19 December 2018].

IMDb contributors (n.d.). ‘Santa Claus (1898)’, IMDb. Available at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0242849/ [Accessed: 3 January 2022].

1898 – Come Along, Do!

Directed by: Robert W. Paul

This film is credited as being one of the first to feature more than one shot, a significant step in the evolution of motion picture storytelling. Unfortunately, the second half of the film only survives as stills and the exact means of transitioning between scenes remains lost. The first shot introduces the audience to a couple eating lunch outside an art gallery. Other people enter the gallery and the couple follow suit. In the second shot (now lost), the husband shows particular interest in a nude statue until his wife drags him away.

Stereograph No. 373: Come Along, Do! — copyright 1872 by F. G. Weller.

The film is thought to have been based on controversy surrounding John Gibson’s statue The Tinted Venus, exhibited in 1862. It led to a song where a wife accosts her husband who stares at a nude statue with: “Come along do / What are you staring at? / You ought to know better — so come along do.” The humorous situation was printed as a stereograph in 1872 and republished in the 1890s, likely influencing Robert W. Paul.

Bibliography

Boston Public Library (2013). ‘Come along, do’, Flickr, 25 September. Available at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/11353720335 [Accessed: 2 January 2022].

Brooke, M. (2014). ‘Come Along, Do! (1898)’, BFI Screenonline. Available at: http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/444430/index.html [Accessed: 2 January 2022].

Christie, I. (2013). ‘“Suitable Music”: Accompaniment Practice in Early London Screen Exhibition from R. W. Paul to the Picture Palaces’. In: Brown, J. & Davison, A. (eds.) The Sounds of the Silents in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

IMDb contributors (n.d.). ‘Come Along, Do! (1898), IMDb. Available at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0000182/ [Accessed: 2 January 2022].

1898 – Un homme de têtes / The Four Troublesome Heads

Director: Georges Méliès

This film employs a couple of tricks. Not only does it use the substitution splice (a usual favorite of Méliès), it is one of the earliest instances of multiple exposure. The head removal is likely achieved with the use of a painted dummy head and Méliès wearing a black hood over his head (which accounts for the black background rather than his usual extravagant and detailed sets – arguably a precursor to green screen special effects). He then had to do at least four takes of the various versions of himself interacting with each other, a considerably impressive feat given the tools available at the time.

(In 1903, Siegmund Lubin released an illegal print of the film in America, retitled Four Heads Are Better Than One.)

Bibliography

IMDb contributors (n.d.). Four Heads Are Better Than One (1898)’, IMDb. Available at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0135696/ [Accessed: 2 January 2022].

popegrutch (2016). ‘The Four Troublesome Heads (1898)’, Century Film Project, 30 November. Available at: https://centuryfilmproject.org/2016/11/30/the-four-troublesome-heads-1898/ [Accessed: 2 January 2022].

Wikipedia contributors (2021). ‘The Four Troublesome Heads’, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 28 June. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Troublesome_Heads [Accessed: 2 January 2022].