For reasons to do with my new book, I have been delving into
an even earlier collection of films, made as the 19th century turned
into the 20th.
Montmrency Returns set more than a hundred years ago, and
it’s almost an historical document in itself.
Although just published, it has been on the stocks for a very long
time. The title, Montmorency Returns, is a bit of an in joke for
the many Montmorency fans who have written over the past few years asking where
it was. The fourth book in the
Montmorency series, published in 2006, ended on a cliffhanger. I always intended to bash straight on, but
the publisher had other ideas. Now here
it is, at last, alongside all the other books in the series, which have been
redesigned to match, with better paper and better print than ever. You can get them all on Amazon by clicking here .
Part of my plot involves the early cinema – in the days long
before Hollywood, and just before the New Jersey town of Fort Lee became the heart
of the American film industry.
The great
inventor Thomas A Edison was one of the pioneers of the industry (both as a developer of
hardware and as a producer and marketer of films). When I first started thinking about the book,
it was hard to get to see original films from his time. You had to go to special events at arty or
academic cinemas. It was difficult even
to find out what had survived, and where. In the few years of publishing hiatus, a treasure trove of material has
appeared on YouTube, and here are some samples.
You can find them all easily just by typing a few appropriate words into any search
engine. They may seem a little crude,
but they are fascinating, and I should perhaps warn you that, for reasons of
taste, a couple may be a little difficult for some people to watch.
First, here’s a very brief re-enactment of the execution of
Mary, Queen of Scots, made in 1895. It’s one of the earliest e examples of editing for dramatic effect. Although a little indistinct, it’s worth
watching for the way the head rolls away after the chop.
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| MQS with her head on, just to the right of centre |
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| MQS, head off. The head is just to the left of centre |
Then there’s a whole sequence of films featuring the career
and assassination of President McKinley in 1901.
McKinley’s death, and its consequences, are at the heart of
my story, and I not only used the films for research, but also built them in to
the plot.
Although Edison’s cameramen followed McKinley around intensively
on his last days - as he visited the World’s Fair in Buffalo in New York State -
there is no cinematic record of the assassination itself, nor of the capture of
his killer inside the Temple of Music on the exhibition site.
What we do have is studies of the crowd before and after the
event – remarkable for the uniformity of dress (especially the men’s straw
boater hats) and for the the sheer press of people.
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| The Buffalo Fair lit by electric light |
McKinley’s killer, Leon Czolgosz, admitted his crime, and
was executed in the electric chair.
Edison staged a reconstruction of the execution, which is chilling in many ways – not least for the nonchalance of all those taking part in the event.
A couple of years later, and in another film which some of
you may not want to watch, Edison again demonstrated the power of electricity to take
life by showing the killing of Topsy, a circus elephant, who had killed one of her trainers and been sentenced to
death by hanging.
Edison offered to electrocute the beast, partly at the
behest of those who regarded hanging as cruel, but mainly to show the lethal
qualities of Alternating Current (he was marketing Direct Current at the time). If you really want to, you can see both
execution films online.
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| Topsy dying. Seconds later, she is dead |
McKinley’s assassination, following on from anarchist
killings of European leaders,
such as King Umberto
of Italy (see Montmorency and the Assassins) led to a boom in secret service
activity. In Montmorency Returns, the
secret service men scan Edison’s Buffalo films for the faces of anarchist sympathisers.
But not before they’ve had a little light relief from
another 1901 Edison film. It shows a lady
gradually disrobing on a trapeze, flinging her clothes to a couple of excited
gentlemen. Here are some stills from
that one.
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Not very dignified, but rather cheerier than the elephant film, I’m glad to say - though it’s an early example of women’s place in films for some time to
come. Mary Queen of Scots, by the way, was played
by a man.
2 comments:
I love how you saved that revealing line for the last!
I doubt I'll watch any of these films, I'm too much of a softie. But I'm glad they still exist for history's sake.
Very interesting post, thank you. Just started M5 btw
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