Classic Clips

The 1896 version of La Fée aux Choux (The Fairy of the Cabbages), is a lost film that featured a honeymoon couple, a farmer, pictures of babies glued to cardboard, and one live baby. This is arguably the world's first narrative film, and the first film directed by a woman. Alice Guy-Blaché reported that she had to remake the film at least twice and this accounts for the two films dated 1900 and 1902 that are available to view online. Alice's 1900 version employed one actress (the fairy), two live babies, and a number of dolls. Her 1902 version, later retitled Sage-femme de première classe, employed a honeymoon couple and a female baby merchant along with numerous babies and dolls. In a still photograph from the 1902 version called Sage-femme de première classe (Midwife First Class) Alice appears, dressed as a man. She does not play the husband in the film, but said that she "for fun pulled on the peasant clothes" for the photograph. Alice's 1896 film was the first to bring a story to an audience and the first to have a written scenario which Alice wrote. The 1896 version was filmed on 60-millimeter film and was about 30 meters (about 90 feet) long. The 1900 version of La Fée aux Choux is on 35-millimeter film and is about sixty seconds long. The 1902 version is on 35-millimeter film and is about four minutes long. All three versions refer to an old and popular French (and actually, European) fairy tale in which baby boys are born in cabbages, and baby girls are born in roses. Alice Guy-Blaché, the director of La Fée aux Choux, is one of the early cinema's most important figures, and had a long career as a director, producer and studio owner, working in both France and the United States. Classic Clips http://classicclips.ca

The Haunted Castle - Le Manoir du diable or The House of the Devil, released in the United States as The Haunted Castle and in Britain as The Devil's Castle, is an 1896 French short silent film directed by Georges Méliès. The film, which depicts a brief pantomimed sketch in the style of a theatrical comic fantasy, tells the story of an encounter with the Devil and various attendant phantoms. It is intended to evoke amusement and wonder from its audiences, rather than fear. However, because of its themes and characters, the film has been considered to technically be the first horror film. Such a classification can also be attributed to the film's depiction of a human transforming into a bat, a plot element which has led some observers to label the work the first vampire film. The film is also innovative in length; its running time of over three minutes was ambitious for its era. A single remake was produced one year later under the title Le Château hanté (The Haunted Castle), which is often confused with this film. The film was presumed lost until 1988, when a copy was found in the New Zealand Film Archive. Classic Clips http://classicclips.ca

Promenade of Ostriches Promenade of Ostriches, Paris Botanical Gardens is an Auguste and Louis Lumière production. This early short movie from Lumière gives a view of Parisian leisure and childhood at the fin-de-siécle. The fashions will probably fascinate modern viewers more than the animals did at the time. Classic Clips http://classicclips.ca

Poultry-Yard is an Auguste and Louis Lumière production. Two girls do their chores. Standing alongside a tree-lined farmhouse, two children who are about ten and four years old toss grain to a flock of about 50 domesticated ducks. A woman watches them briefly and then moves on. The older girl has her grain in a bucket, the younger one's grain is in her apron. The children stay in one spot, as does the camera; it's the ducks that move around. Chickens are in the background; only one braves the ducks' territory. Classic Clips http://classicclips.ca

Feeding The Doves is a Thomas A. Edison, Inc. production, with contributors White, James H. (James Henry), production and Heise, William, camera 1896. A farm yard picture, showing a young girl and her baby sister scattering grain to the doves and chickens. The fluttering birds and excited fowls give an abundance of action to the scene, which is one of the prettiest, clearest and most attractive ever taken -- Maguire & Baucus catalogue. Classic Clips http://classicclips.ca

Dragoons Crossing the Sâone (Dragoons traversant la Saône à la nage), is a short film produced by Auguste and Louis Lumière. A stationary camera looks across Burgundy’s river Sâone toward a small military encampment. Four horsemen enter the water in the foreground, each riding his horse as it swims across toward camp or leading it by the bridle as they swim. The film captures the crossing of half-naked dragoons with horses across the Burgundy river Saône. First, 4 men enter the river, then another 7 follow them. On the other bank you can see a temporary pier and a camp not far from it. Some men on the other side are watching the ravages, others ignoring him. Classic Clips http://classicclips.ca

A Serpentine Dance (French: Danse Serpentine) was an 1896 French silent film directed by Georges Méliès. It was released by Méliès's company Star Film and is numbered 44 in its catalogues. The film is currently presumed lost. Classic Clips http://classicclips.ca

A stationary camera is set at a curve in the train tracks, with the Brooklyn Bridge in the background. From the bridge, a four-car streetcar approaches and turns to he viewer's left. As it passes, a train going toward the bridge passes on the tracks in front. It has four cars as well, with a few passengers aboard. A train engine that is moving backwards follows that train. A man atop a tall ladder works on a light pole. a.k.a. 'Pont De Brooklyn' and 'Brooklyn Bridge in the U.S.A.'Lumière No. 321 - Produced by Auguste & Louis Lumière Camera: Alexandre Promio (Jean Alexandre Louis Promio). Classic Clips http://classicclips.ca

A Morning Alarm is an American silent film from 1896 , produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company . The directors are James H. White (1872–1944) and William Heise (1847–1910). The film was shot on November 14, 1896 in Newark , New Jersey . Thematically, it is followed by the images Starting for the Fire and Fighting the Fire , which can be viewed individually or as a whole. Classic Clips http://classicclips.ca

This 45 second clip produced by Auguste and Louis Lumière shows two Lumière babies seated next to each other in high chairs, apparently enjoying themselves. Suddenly, one snatches a toy from the other and the feud begins. Andrée Lumière - The Baby Seated on the Right Suzanne Lumière - The Baby Seated on the Left Classic Clips http://classicclips.ca

Le Repas de Bébé (also known as Baby's Dinner and Feeding the Baby) is an 1895 French short black-and-white silent documentary film directed and produced by Louis Lumière and starring Andrée Lumière. The film formed part of the first commercial presentation of the Lumière Cinématographe on December 28, 1895 at the Salon Indien, Grand Café, 14 Boulevard des Capucines, Paris. Classic Clips http://classicclips.ca

Les Forgerons (also known as The Blacksmiths) is an 1895 French short black-and-white silent documentary film directed and produced by Louis Lumière. Given its age, this short film is available to freely download from the Internet. The film formed part of the first commercial presentation of the Lumière Cinématographe on 28 December 1895 at the Salon Indien, Grand Café, 14 Boulevard des Capuchins, Paris. As with all early Lumière movies, this film was made in a 35 mm format with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. It was filmed by means of the Cinématographe, an all-in-one camera, which also serves as a film projector and developer. Two men stand working as blacksmiths. The one on the left of the screen repeatedly hammers an anvil while the man on the right winds a device. The man of the left then removes the metal he was hammering and places it into a bucket of water. At the end of the film a third man walks onto the screen from the left, with a wine glass and bottle in hand, hands the glass to the smith at the anvil, and begins to pour him a drink. Classic Clips http://classicclips.ca

The Mechanical Butcher (original title:La Charcuterie mécanique) is an 1895 "humorous subject" (as classed by its makers) created by the Lumière Brothers. Phil Hardy's The Overlook Film Encyclopedia: Science Fiction classes it as the first science fiction film. The film purports to show a machine that automatically turns a live pig into various pork products; in the film, a live pig is placed inside a stand and finished products are then lifted out of the other end of the stand. The theme was widely repeated in films such as Making Sausages (aka The End of All Things) (1897) by George Albert Smith, which depicted cats and dogs being converted into sausage (along with a duck and a boot) by a machine. Smith recorded the first sale to Owen Brooks on December 22, 1897. American Mutoscope and Biograph made The Sausage Machine the same year, which was a parody of the conveyor belt system. Edison Studios followed with Fun in a Butcher Shop (1901) and Dog Factory (1904), both of which showed pet dogs being turned into sausages. The former showed simply a primitive crank, while the latter film depicted an electric machine with a reversible process. Classic Clips http://classicclips.ca

La Mer (Baignade en mer) is a French film directed by Louis Lumière, released in 1895 .This "animated photographic view", as Louis Lumière called his reels of impressed film, is one of 10 films shown at the Indian Salon of the Grand Café from December 28, 1895. Classic Clips http://classicclips.ca

Annabelle Serpentine Dance is a short silent American film produced and distributed by Edison Manufacturing Company in 1895. It is one of several released by the studio the late 19th century. Each short film depicts the popular serpentine dance performed by Annabelle Moore. Many of the prints were distributed in color, which was hand-tinted. The dance is performed in succession in a lockoff shot. The first is in a flowing skirt, held out by her hands with arms extended. She smiles, wearing butterfly wings on her back and the wings of Mercury in her hair. Her dance emphasizes the movement of her visible, bare legs. She kicks high, bows, and moves to her right and left. The second dancer has a voluminous, long skirt, and holds sticks in each hand attached to the skirt's outer edges. The flowing patterns of the skirt from her arm movements give the second scene a different feeling from the first. Classic Clips http://classicclips.ca

Robetta and Doretto, No 2 , 1894 is a fragment of an American short silent film. Performers: Phil Doretto (aka Phil Lauter) and Robetta. "The pursuit of Hop Lee by an irate policeman"-- Maguire & Baucus catalogue. Contributors - Dickson, W. K.-L. (William Kennedy-Laurie), 1860-1935, production. Doretto, Phil, performer. Robetta, performer.Heise, William, camera. Thomas A. Edison, Inc. Hendricks (Gordon) Collection (Library of Congress) Classic Clips http://classicclips.ca

Glenroy Bros., (no. 2), also known as Comic Boxing: The Glenroy Brothers is an 1894 silent film from Edison Studios. It is about 27 seconds long and shows the Glenroy Brothers boxing. The Glenroy Brothers perform a portion of their vaudeville act, "The Comic View of Boxing: The Tramp & the Athlete", which depicts a boxer with a classic style trying to contend with an opponent who uses a very unorthodox approach. The film was produced by William K.L. Dickson in the Edison Black Maria Studio. Classic Clips http://classicclips.ca

Hadj Cheriff is an American film directed by William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, released in 1894 . This film is one of the first shot with the first vertical linear scrolling cinema camera, the Kinetograph camera , in 35 mm wide format , with two pairs of four perforations per frame , designed by Dickson and Heise from sketches by Thomas Edison and the first model which unrolled the 19 mm wide film horizontally, with six perforations at the bottom of the frame. Although the variant title for this film is "Arab knife juggler", and the performer is holding a knife in each hand, he appears to discard the knives just before his first handstand and cartwheel. He then performs an acrobatic routine which is a series of handstands, cartwheels, leaps and twirls. Contributors - Dickson, W. K.-L. (William Kennedy-Laurie), 1860-1935, film producer. Cheriff, Hadji, performer. Heise, William, cinematographer. Thomas A. Edison, Inc., production company, film distributor. Classic Clips http://classicclips.ca

Sandow is a series of three 1894 silent short actuality films by the Edison Studios featuring bodybuilder Eugen Sandow, directed by William K.L. Dickson. The series is considered a historically significant early film series. Promoter Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. found that the audience was more fascinated by Sandow's bulging muscles than by the amount of weight he was lifting, so Ziegfeld had Sandow perform poses which he dubbed "muscle display performances"... and the legendary strongman added these displays in addition to performing his feats of strength with barbells. He added chain-around-the-chest breaking and other colorful displays to Sandow's routine. Sandow quickly became Ziegfeld's first star. See the Movie Trailer from the 1936 movie, "The Great Ziegfeld." in our Classic Clips Academy Awards section for Best Pictures of the Year. The movie portrays Sandow, played by Nat Pendleton: http://classicclips.ca/trailers/best_.... "The Great Ziegfeld." is an American epic musical drama film directed by Robert Z. Leonard and produced by Hunt Stromberg. It stars William Powell as the theatrical impresario Florenz "Flo" Ziegfeld Jr., Luise Rainer as Anna Held, and Myrna Loy as Billie Burke. In 1894, Sandow featured in a short film by the Edison Studios. The film was of only part of the show and features him flexing his muscles rather than performing any feats of physical strength. While the content of the film reflects the audience attention being primarily focused on his appearance it made use of the unique capacities of the new medium. Film theorists have attributed the appeal being the striking image of a detailed image moving in synchrony, much like the example of the Lumière brothers' Repas de bébé where audiences were reportedly more impressed by the movement of trees swaying in the background than the events taking place in the foreground. In 1894, he appeared in a short Kinetoscope film that was part of the first commercial motion picture exhibition in history. Classic Clips http://classicclips.ca

Fred Ott's Sneeze (also known as Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze) is an 1894 short, black-and-white, silent film shot by William K.L. Dickson and featuring Fred Ott. It is the oldest surviving motion picture with a copyright. In the five-second film, which was shot in January 1894, one of Thomas Edison's assistants, Fred Ott, takes a pinch of snuff and sneezes. According to the Library of Congress, the film was "made for publicity purposes, as a series of still photographs to accompany an article in Harper's Weekly." In 2015, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. Classic Clips http://classicclips.ca

Luis Martinetti, Contortionist is an 1894 short film produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company. The film, which runs 12.5 seconds, consists of a contortionist act performed by Luis Martinetti of the Martinetti Brothers trapeze act. Martinetti wears tiger-striped tights and performs contortionist poses on a pair of trapeze rings. The film was shot on October 11, 1894 at the Edison Black Maria studio in West Orange, New Jersey. The film is preserved by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and was released on the 2000 DVD box set Treasures from American Film Archives, which was compiled by the National Film Preservation Foundation. Classic Clips http://classicclips.ca

The footage of "Fire Rescue Scene" consists of a staged enactment of a typical rescue operation, most likely using real professional fire-fighters, in which one of the fire-fighters uses a ladder to reach residents trapped in a burning building. By using children as the endangered residents, it adds extra tension and suspense. The then-standard 50 foot length of film limits how much can happen, but it fills almost the entire running time with action. Directed and Produced by William Dickson and William Heise for the Edison Manufacturing Co.

Falling Cat is an 1894 short film produced and directed by Étienne-Jules Marey, a French scientist. It was filmed in a public park, Bois de Boulogne, and released in France. It is believed to be the first motion picture in history to show a live cat. The film consists solely of the feline falling down and landing on its feet. Marey had assembled a camera that was capable of taking twelve consecutive frames a second. It resembled a short barrelled shotgun with a magazine. With this, he studied various animals in action. His most famous study was his ‘animated zoo’, in which this cat was dropped from a height of a few feet in order to see if it always landed on its feet.

Professor Welton presents an amusing fight between two trained cats wearing boxing gloves. The Film was directed and produced by William Dickson and William Heise for Thomas A. Edison, Inc. Classic Clips http://classicclips.ca

Juan A. Caicedo, "King of the slack wire". His daring feat of balancing as he performs his thrilling Tight Rope Act at 50 feet in the air. The film was produced by William Dickson and William Weise for the Edison Manufacturing Co. in 1894.