The Year 1896 in Film: The Debuts of Georges Méliès, Pathé frères, American Mutoscope, Gaumont and Argentina

This is a work in progress as I am still researching the year 1896 in film. I’ve added 628 films to my index so far whereas IMDb has 848 entries. I think I may have, however, found most of the surviving films. Conclusions drawn will be based on the data I’ve gathered so far and this article will be revised as my research continues.

Out of the 628 films 424 were produced in France, 278 of those by the Lumière company which was the most prolific studio and whose films dominated the European market. Georges Méliès made his debut as a director and producer, founding his own production company, the Star Film Company, and producing 88 films. Another newcomer in France was the Pathé frères company, which would be become the largest production company in the world in the early 20th century. The company was founded in September and so far I have 12 Pathé films in my index from 1896 though I’m uncertain if one of those is a Pathé production. Léon Gaumont established his company in 1895, constructing and marketing film projectors. In 1896 he began marketing films, many of which were not made in-house but bought from other filmmakers. So far I have three films from the Gaumont company from 1896 in my index. Other French filmmakers who made their debuts in 1896 are Paul Nadar, Ernest Normandin, Eugène Pirou, and Albert Kirchner.

The second largest producer of films in 1896 was the USA and so far I’ve added 173 films to my index and 131 were produced by the Edison company. William K.L. Dickson, former Edison employee who invented the camera which Edison took credit for, co-founded the American Mutoscope Company in late 1895 and began producing films in 1896. So far I have 39 films of their films in my index. Of the remaining three films one was produced by the Selig Polyscope Company, which also got its start in 1896, one was produced by the International Film Company, formed by Edison employees Charles Webster and Edmund Kuhn who left Edison in the fall of 1896 and the other has been attributed to the Lambda Company, which had begun projecting films to paying audiences on May 20, 1895.

The UK was the third largest film producer with 22 films in my index so far, most of those produced by Robert W. Paul. Casimir Sivan, who I assume was born in France, settled in Geneva in 1888 and became a Swiss citizen in 1900. He was a clockmaker but also invented a projector/camera in 1896. I have three of his films in my index which could be considered the first Swiss films. There are four films produced by Aurélio da Paz dos Reis, the first films made in Portugal. So far I only have one film from Germany and one from Italy in my index for 1896.

There are 277 films in my YouTube playlist (there are two versions of Séance de prestidigitation). Seven of those are fragments. One Lumière film cannot be uploaded to YouTube because it features a cockfight but may be viewed Odnoklassniki. The Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC) holds 115 Lumière films from 1896 that are not available for public viewing as far as I know. There are 23 (non-Lumière) films held by various archives and there are 197 lost films, a number which will certainly increase as my research continues.

Some readers may wonder why I haven’t mentioned Alice Guy amongst the directors making their debuts in 1896. Contrary to Guy’s own statements and popular opinion, she didn’t direct a film until 1902.

Guy’s statement in her autobiography that her first film was made in 1896 is not supported by any primary source, and recent research by Maurice Gianati suggests that she did not direct her first film until 1902, though she is likely to have scripted or otherwise assisted in the production of Gaumont films from 1897 onwards. In truth, this is a period when the concepts of ‘director’ or film authorship are anachronistic. One should acknowledge her undoubted presence at the heart of pioneering film production in France rather than identify some films as being ‘hers’ when there is no certain evidence to confirm this.”

Luke McKernan – Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema

From early-cinema historian Jean-Paul Seguin’s article about Guy on his site grimh.org:

So I will come back to Alice Guy when I write about the year 1902 in film. In the meantime, if you’d like to read about the real first woman director, Marguerite Vrignault, see David Bond’s article  The First Talkies – Part 1: 1900 “Le Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre”.

Significant Events of the Year in the Film Industry

France

Georges Méliès: Cinema’s First True Artist

Georges Méliès

At once the cinema’s first true artist and the most prolific technical innovator of the early years, Georges Méliès (1861-1938) was a pioneer in recognizing the possibilities of the medium for narrative and spectacle. He created the basic vocabulary of special effects, and built the first studio of glass-house form, the prototype of European studios of the silent era. The success of his films contributed to the development of an international market in films and did much to secure the ascendancy of French cinema in the pre-1914 years. Outside this historical contribution, Méliès’s films are the earliest to survive as a total, coherent artistic creation with its own validity and personality. They had a visual style as distinctive as Douanier Rousseau or Chagall, and a sense of fantasy, fun and nonsense whose exuberance is still infectious after almost a century. Méliès’ parents had built up a prosperous footwear business and at twenty-one, after military service, Georges joined his elder brothers in the factory. Rescue from this mundane prospect came in 1884 when he was sent to London to learn English. He was enchanted by the London pantomimes, but much more by the magic shows of Maskelyne and Cooke at the Egyptian Hall, which inspired him to study stage illusionism. In 1888 his share of the family business, which his father had handed over to his sons, and a rich marriage, enabled him to take over the small but famous Parisian home of stage magic, the Théâtre Robert-Houdin, at 8 Boulevard des Italiens. Over the next decade Méliès devised some twenty-five major stage illusions, many of which were later to inspire his films.

Already a respected personality in the Parisian entertainment world, Méliès was naturally invited to the générale of the Lumière show at the Grand Café on 28 December 1895. Seeing in the Cinématographe a new attraction for his theatre, he attempted to buy it. When the Lumières refused him, he went to London to acquire one of Robert Paul’s earliest projectors. This, with the aid of an engineer, Lucien Reulos, he converted into his first film camera. Able only to buy a stock of unperforated Eastman film, he was obliged to commission a perforator from a local engineer. In May 1896, a month after he had begun showing Paul and Edison films at his theatre, Méliès was able to shoot his first film Une Partie de Cartes. By September, with Reulos and Lucien Korsten, he patented a new camera, which was subsequently advertised as the Kinétographe Robert-Houdin. In December he adopted the Star trade mark. By the end of 1896 Méliès had shot eighty films, each twenty meters in length, and had already explored the effects that could be obtained by accelerated motion (in Dessinateur: Chamberlain) and substitution. He claimed that this effect, which was to be so basic to his work, was discovered one day when his camera jammed briefly while filming in la place de l’Opera: when the film was printed and screened, Méliès was thrilled to find that a motor bus had changed into a hearse. At once he perceived that the trick was a more effective means of producing the disappearance of a lady (L’Escamotage d’une dame chez Robert-Houdin) than the elaborate machinery of his stage illusions.”

David Robinson – From Peep Show to Palace: The Birth of American Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996)

The Formation of Pathé frères

Charles Pathé

Charles Pathé (1863-1957), while working for a meagre salary for a lawyer, chanced on the novelty of the moment, the Edison Phonograph, which was a sensation at the Vincennes Fair on the east of Paris and with partly borrowed money, he bought one. On 9 September 1894 he returned with his wife to one of the best known fairs of the period, that of Monthéty to the east of Paris, and in the one day, at a charge of 20 centimes a listener, made 200 francs. Quickly seeing the advantages of selling rather than using the Phonograph, he bought three examples in London, and successfully resold them. Shortly after, another curiosity appeared – the Edison Kinetoscope. Charles, who had opened a shop at 72, cours de Vincennes in Paris, revisited London in 1895, bought pirated Kinetoscopes manufactured by Robert Paul and resold them to fairgrounds. Later in 1895, he was associated for a while with Henri Joly who manufactured for him a camera to take films for the Kinetoscope.

But the future of Charles Pathé was decided by the arrival of the Lumière Cinématographe. On 28 September 1896, with his brother Émile, he formed the Société Pathé Frères, whose office was at 98, rue de Richelieu in Paris. A year later, the company became, thanks to a certain Claude Grivolas, the Compagnie Générale de Cinématographes, Phonographes et Pellicules (Anciens Établissements Pathé Frères) with the two brothers as directors. From then on, the company, under the direction of Émile for the phonograph and of Charles for the cinematograph, flourished, expanded and sold all over the world. ‘I did not invent the cinema, but I industrialized it’ wrote Charles Pathé later.”

Henri Bosquet – Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema

Gaumont Begins Distributing Films

Léon Gaumont

Léon Gaumont (1864-1946), modestly born but mechanically minded, was fascinated by photography. The seventeen-year-old’s notebook contains advanced ideas on filming and on successive projection. In 1881 he entered the Paris workshops of Jules Carpentier, one of the best known precision instruments manufacturers of the time and, years later, the constructor of the Lumière Cinématographe. In 1888 Gaumont married Camille Maillard, who brought as her dowry a piece of land on the rue des Alouettes, near the Buttes Chaumont, the eventual site of the Gaumont studios and of the ‘cité Elgé’. In 1893, Gaumont went to work for Félix Richard in his shop, the Comptoir géneral de photographie, at 57 rue Saint-Roch in Paris. Richard became embroiled in a legal battle with his brother Jules and, in June 1895, offered to sell out to Léon Gaumont. The latter bought the business and, on 10 August 1895, in partnership with the engineer Gustave Eiffel (the creator of the tower), the astronomer Joseph Vallot and the financier Alfred Besnier, formed a company L. Gaumont et Cie. He accepted a proposal from Georges Demenÿ, Étienne-Jules Marey’s old collaborator, that he should manufacture and market Demenÿ’s chronophotographic camera and his projector-viewer, the Phonoscope. This last machine, rechristened the Bioscope, went on sale in November 1895, and the Biographe camera soon after. Both failed: the Phonoscope used glass discs and the camera used non perforated film.

Gaumont recovered from this setback by manufacturing, with engineer Léopold René Decaux and Demenÿ, a camera/projector using 60 mm perforated film (1896), followed by a model using 35 mm perforated film (1897). The first films in the Gaumont catalogue were bought from, among others, Albert Londe, P. Gers and Deslandes. Soon after, Gaumont’s young secretary, Alice Guy, was entrusted with the production of films. The company reached second place (after Pathé) in the market for French cinematographic equipment, producing the Chrono de poche (1900) for amateurs, the Chronophone for sound projection (at the end of 1902), and the Chronochrome for projecting color films (1912). In 1906, the Etablissements Gaumont was founded as a limited company. It flourished until 1914, thanks to an excellent group of film directors including Louis Feuillade, Jean Durand, Roméo Bosetti, Léonce Perret, and Emile Cohl. In the twenties, the firm produced one avant-garde filmmaker, Marcel L’Herbier, but otherwise stayed faithful to its conservative image, financing the films of Feuillade, Henri Fescourt and Léon Poirier.”

Laurent Mannoni – The Great Art of Light and Shadow: Archaeology of the Cinema (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000)

Eugène Pirou and the Birth of « Scènes grivoises »

Eugène Pirou

Though Eugène Pirou (1841-1909) has long been recognized as one of the pioneering filmmakers in France, his work as a stills photographer is less well known. He was working as a portrait photographer from at least the time of the Paris Commune in 1871, where he took pictures of the slain communards. In 1888 he photographed General Boulanger in full uniform, and the following year was present at the Paris Exposition, where Étienne-Jules Marey’s chronophotography was on display, and perhaps this is where his interest in moving photography was initiated. In 1896 he wrote to the Eastman Kodak company asking for information about the Edison Vitascope, but nothing seems to have come of this and he teamed up with Henri Joly, who had developed a projector. This allowed Pirou to be one of the first rivals to the Lumières in Frances, presenting films at the Café de la Paix in Paris in April 1896. By this time he had dubbed himself as the ‘photographe des rois’ and appropriately the first films he made were of the visit of Tsar Nikolas II to France in October 1896, showing various official activities. But Pirou’s real importance is in pioneering another type of production, the risqué film. In the autumn of 1896 he produced Le Coucher de la mariée, in which Mlle. Louise Willy recreated the most sensational part of her eponymous stage hit, where she performed a striptease.

The resulting film was unusually long at sixty metres (around three minutes) and was such a sensation when shown in Paris (along with the films of the Tsar’s visit) that Pirou opened at two other venues in the city and even exhibited at the Casino in Nice. Anxious to cash in, other filmmakers including Georges Méliès and Charles Pathé also made striptease films, and so was launched an entire genre of risqué films, known in France as scènes grivoises d’un caractère piquant. Such films were not always welcomed, and one of them (probably the Pirou title) had to be withdrawn from a London music hall in January 1897 after protests from the more respectable clientele. Léar (Albert Kirchner), the director of Le Coucher de la mariée, may have been a trader in pornographic pictures, another of Pirou’s business interests, though Léar went on to make the first film of the life of Christ. It is not clear what happened to Pirou after the turn of the century, but his place in film history was assured; in the brief period 1896 to ’97 he had made over fifty films (frames of which are preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale); other achievements in these years include pioneering the amateur film business, and also (probably for the first time) enticing a theatrical star, Cecile Sorel, before the camera.”

Stephen Bottomore – Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema

USA

Edison Premieres the Vitascope

Thomas A. Edison

Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) had put together a team that, after several years, had perfected a camera that could take a rapid series of pictures on a strip of new material – celluloid roll film – cut to 35mm wide and perforated with guide holes down the edge. They’d built a peepshow viewing machine to watch these 17-second mini-movies, the Kinetoscope, which had proved popular but ultimately not that profitable, or actually loss-making, for those involved. Everybody was telling him that they wanted to be able to project the films big, not view them tiny, but by late 1895, despite copious wild boasts to the press of his success, he had singularly failed to achieve this and had now sacked William Dickson, the person who’d done most of the work and was keenest on projecting films.

It had been Dickson’s connection with a group of people who had formerly collaborated with Edison, the Lambda Company, that provoked the schism. They had had been projecting their widescreen 50mm films, up to eight minutes long, with their ‘Eidoloscope’ to audiences around the USA since May. But they didn’t have the drawing power of the Edison name nor the industrial firepower of his organization. They could be beaten, but he needed an alternative product.

Norman Raff & Frank Gammon had the rights to the Kinetoscope in the USA and Canada, but they could see business nosediving, so were delighted when they encountered a device called the ‘Phantoscope’ from the inventor Thomas Armat, which could project the Edison films. Somewhat nervously, they approached the Big Man and proposed he take on the Phantoscope. In January they had a deal: the Edison Manufacturing Company would build the projectors and supply films. Delighted, they informed Armat of their success, at which point the alleged inventor had a teensy-weensy confession to make. He had somehow omitted to mention that the projector was a co-invention between himself and C. Francis Jenkins – who had been working on moving pictures for some time before the two met – and they were taking out a joint patent. However, the pair of them had had a massive falling out, months before, and now weren’t even speaking to each other. It would also emerge that Jenkins was exercising his right to market the Phantoscope himself.

That had to be tackled with lawyers and threats, but more pressing was getting the whole thing into shape for public presentation ASAP. There was much to be done to improve the quality of the machine for mass manufacture and make the films suitable for projection. Another thing: the name. Raff and Gammon didn’t like ‘Phantoscope’ or Armat’s favoured ‘Zoescope’: they decided it would be called ‘The Vitascope’. And yet another thing: Armat’s name. That wouldn’t sell anything, but Edison’s sure as hell would. Everybody had been waiting for an Edison machine. So, “Edison’s Vitascope” it would be.

There was a further important change they wanted. The theatre owners had made plain that they thought the Kinetoscope pictures were too square in format – presumably some of them had seen the Eidoloscope films. The Edison company had, in fact, already done some work on widescreen cameras. But the response from Armat wasn’t favorable, arguing, “Notwithstanding the fact that I think it is a very simple matter to use the wide films, difficulties may arise that it will take experiments to overcome, and experiments take time, and time is the most important factor, so I would certainly rush the machines just as they stand, and they can be modified afterward if desired, for the wide films, with very little expense.”

And thus, cinema’s fate was sealed. The modifications were never carried out, of course, the Lumières copied the Edison film format and the Eidoloscope faded away, leaving us with boxy Kinetoscope-shaped films for decades, followed by boxy TV.

Mind you, Armat had a point about getting a move on. Noises had been reaching them about the success of films being projected in Europe. There were the Lumières in France and Birt Acres and Robert Paul in Britain, who seemed to be enjoying enormous success. It wouldn’t be long before they crossed the Atlantic and undermined Edison’s opportunity. But the European issue wasn’t just about the fact that other people had projectors, it was what they were projecting.

The Edison Kinetoscope films were shot in a cramped black studio in the grounds of the company’s works. They were profoundly restricted by the fact that their camera had to be connected to mains electricity and was so bulky and heavy that it had to be moved on rails set into the floor of the studio. The Europeans were getting out in the street and into the home, shooting family life, public events, royalty, foreign lands, whilst all Edison had were novelty acts, comedy skits and miniaturized boxing. The year before, at the request of their European agents, the Edison team had built a portable camera and sent it to Paris and London. It returned with absolutely nothing. It seems the camera had failed completely.

Not only that, but the Kinetoscope films had been shot at around forty frames per second, a speed that would pretty much trash a projector, much faster than the sixteen frames per second used on the other side of the Atlantic. And they were very short. What to do? Well, first of all, choose films that would look OK slowed down – dance films would work well, slowing them down would make the dancers look more graceful. Then, make a loop system like in the Kinetoscope so you could show the films over and over whilst you got the next one ready on the second projector. And you could take something old and make it new by coloring a film in by hand, which both Robert Paul and Birt Acres had independently experimented with. But that still didn’t get you out of the studio, that still didn’t get you that big, international feeling. There was only one thing to do: buy it in, just like they bought in the projector.

Acres and Paul had worked together briefly then gone their own ways, angrily. One of the main places that Acres had gone was Germany where he had filmed in several locations, including capturing footage of Kaiser Wilhelm. Somehow the Edison people seem to have made contact with Acres, who sent his photographic assistant, Henry Short, over to the United States in March 1896 to capture footage of Niagara Falls and New York City for his venue in London. It seems likely therefore that Short was carrying with him various films for potential inclusion in the Vitascope’s opening shows.

With a major theatre booked and Edison’s sign-off on the work that had been done with the Vitascope, a preview was staged with the man himself at his West Orange works on April 3rd 1896 for the press and invited guests. Edison talked of the “seven or eight months” he’d worked on the projector – which he had, of course, first seen three months previously – and then showed two films. The first was a well-known Kinetoscope view of Annabelle doing a skirt dance, now hand-colored. The second was from the other side of the Atlantic: the English Derby of 1895 which had been filmed by Birt Acres and screened by both Acres and Paul.

In the Viatascope’s opening week at Koster & Bial’s Music Hall, kicking off on April 23rd 1896, the Derby wasn’t on the bill, but three other films were, which had nothing to do with Edison. One was Kaiser Wilhelm Reviewing His Troops, which had been seen widely in Britain and was the first film of royalty or a national leader to ever be shown publicly. Even more intriguingly, they promised “Venice, showing Gondolas”. This too was from Acres and, as with the Kaiser, shot after his partnership with Paul ended. But Acres had never been to Italy.

Whilst in Hamburg filming the emperor, Acres decided to take in another major spectacle, which was entitled Italien in Hamburg. This was nothing less than a recreation of La Serenissima along the side of the canal, complete with Doge’s Palace, Saint Mark’s Square and the Bridge of Sighs. The publicity said that the gondoliers had been imported directly from Venice.

But amongst the six films that were selected for the Vitascope’s public premiere was another Acres subject which had attracted much attention in Britain. Here titled Sea Waves, it became known as Rough Sea at Dover and was the film that journalists most excitedly discussed after the event. The Dramatic Mirror declaimed, “The effect was simply marvelous. Wave after wave came tumbling on the sand and as they struck broke into tiny floods just like the real thing. Some of the people in the front rows seemed to be afraid they were going to get wet and looked about to see where they could run to in case the waves came too close.”

So, with the help of a machine that two other people invented, lawsuits, some colored-in Kinetoscope films, a couple of new ones and some foreign sights courtesy of Birt Acres, Edison made ‘his’ Broadway movie debut. Despite what one might imagine, or sketch artists for that matter, the New York Times said the figures were only “about half life size”. It goes on to recount, “There were loud calls for Mr. Edison, but he made no response.” In the circumstances, it seems appropriate that he didn’t show his face.”

Peter Domankiewicz – Fake It Till You Make It – Edison’s Movie Premiere

Formation of the American Mutoscope Company

William Kennedy-Laurie Dickson (1860-1935) is a key figure in the practical development of cinematography. He was born in France and emigrated to the United States in 1879. Joining Thomas Edison in 1883, he quickly rose to become one of his senior associates. Work on motion pictures began in 1888, and continued – with many interruptions – for several years. Dickson and his assistants were influenced in their perception of the problem and its solution by the ideas of Edison himself, Muybridge, Anschütz, and particularly Étienne-Jules Marey, whom Edison visited in Paris in August 1889. After experiments involving microphotographs, a Tachyscope and a horizontal-feed camera, the final form of a vertically-fed, 35 mm camera utilizing celluloid strips with a double row of perforations, had been reached by October 1892. The famous Black Maria revolving film studio was designed by Dickson, and had been completed by February 1893, but work on the viewing device – the Kinetoscope – delayed the start of regular film production until January 1894. A wide variety of subjects, many featuring athletes (an idea probably suggested by Muybridge’s work) and popular entertainers, was produced at this studio. The first Kinetoscope parlor was opened in New York in April 1894, and by the end of the year news of the machine had spread throughout the world. Although crude in both appearance and effect, it was a successful and practical device, and it provided the inspiration for many later attempts to achieve film projection. By 1894 Dickson had reached the height of his reputation with Edison, and in that year he and his sister wrote a biography of Edison in which they discussed and illustrated the early film work at West Orange. But this same year also marked the time when Dickson’s loyalty to his employer was compromised as he became covertly involved with the Lathams in their film enterprises. W.E. Gilmore, Edison’s newly appointed General Manager, discovered this deception and reported it to Edison. Perhaps overconfident of the security of his position, Dickson challenged Edison to choose between retaining Gilmore or himself. The result was that he left West Orange at the beginning of April 1895. It was a rather sad end to an often brilliant career, and he never subsequently regained the prestige he had enjoyed there.

Working with the Lathams proved to be uncongenial – they had little money and Dickson soon found that the hedonistic lifestyle of the Latham brothers was not to his taste. He therefore turned his attention to development work for the KMCD group (Koopman, Marvin, Casler, Dickson) which he and three friends had set up at the end of 1894. This eventually became the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, and a formidable rival to Edison’s own film interests. (The Biograph was a projector using wide-gauge 68 mm film, and the Mutoscope was a viewing device utilizing bromide prints in a ‘flick-book’ principle). Dickson was not offered a senior management position with the company when the development work had ended, and instead became a traveling cameraman, an occupation he followed for the next five years. During 1896 and the early part of 1897 he filmed in various parts of the United States, and in May 1897 came to England to take up an appointment as technical manager and cameraman for the newly-formed British Mutoscope and Biograph Company. Using London as his base, he travelled widely throughout Britain and Europe providing a steady stream of product for the British company and the International group.”

Richard Brown and Barry Anthony – A Victorian Film Enterprise: The History of the British Mutoscope and Biograph Company, 1897-1915 (Trowbridge: Flicks Books, 1999)

The KMCD group incorporated the American Mutoscope Company in New Jersey on December 30, 1895. The firm manufactured the Mutoscope and made flip-card movies for it as a rival to Edison’s Kinetoscope for individual “peep shows”, making the company Edison’s chief competitor in the nickelodeon market. In the summer of 1896 the Biograph projector was released, offering superior image quality to Edison’s Vitascope projector. The company soon became a leader in the film industry, with distribution and production subsidiaries around the world, including the British Mutoscope Co. In 1899 it changed its name to the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, and in 1908 to simply the Biograph Company. It was the first company in the United States devoted entirely to film production and exhibition, and for two decades was one of the most prolific, releasing over 3000 short films and 12 feature films. The company was home to pioneering director D. W. Griffith and such actors as Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, and Lionel Barrymore. The Biograph Co. released its last new feature-length films in 1915 and its last new short films in 1916. Biograph spent the remainder of the silent era reissuing its old films, and leasing its Bronx studio to other producers.”

– Wikipedia

UK

Birt Acres Debuts His “Kinetic Lantern”

Birt Acres c. 1900

The first man to successfully take and project a 35 mm film in England. Born in Richmond, Virginia to English parents, Birt Acres (1854-1918) was working in London as a photographer in November 1889. During 1892 he joined the large photographic materials company of Elliott and Son and became manager of their ‘Dry Plate’ works at Barnet, in North London. Acres had become interested at this time in photographing clouds, and in order to be able to reconstitute his time-lapse studies, devised a rapid lantern slide changer which he patented in December 1893. This would appear to represent the extent of his chronophotographic work before the arrival in England of Edison’s Kinetoscope in October 1894. By December 1894, an electrical instrument maker, Robert Paul began to pirate these machines, and urgently needed an independent supply of films for them. Acres’s assistant at Elliott’s, Henry Short, was Paul’s friend, and suggested Acres to Paul as someone who had an existing interest in the area, and the necessary photographic knowledge required to design a workable camera, and take and develop the films for it. The two men first met on 4 February 1895, and what subsequently occurred, became – and to some extent still is – a matter of controversy. According to Paul’s account, he rejected Acres’s idea as impractical and designed and built the camera himself. However, since it was Paul who approached Acres, and it was Acres, rather than Paul who subsequently patented the camera, and claimed copyright on the films, Paul’s account seems of doubtful veracity. Certainly, what is clear is that Acres’s role in the enterprise was undoubtedly of considerable importance.

Rapid progress was made, and a workable camera had been completed by the middle of March. A successful test film featuring Henry Short, was taken outside Acres’s house, and on 29 March Paul sent a clip from it to Thomas Edison. Commercial production began on 30 March with the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, and by the beginning of June several simple comic, dramatic and actuality subjects were available. These included The Arrest of a Pickpocket, The Comic Shoeblack, The Boxing Kangaroo, Performing Bears, and a film of the Derby. A photograph of Acres filming the 1895 Derby has survived and it shows that the camera used was relatively portable. Unlike Paul, who was careful to retain his existing business, Acres committed himself wholly to the new enterprise, and resigned from Elliott’s in April 1895. This gave him the freedom to travel and he entered negotiations with the Stollwerck company, who in June supported a trip to Germany, where he took several films of the opening of the Kiel Canal. While he was away, Paul began to advertise himself as the ‘Sole European Manufacturer’ of the films, and on Acres’s return to England in mid July, the association between the two men ended in acrimony and mutual recriminations.

With Paul gone, Acres now turned his attention to achieving film projection. He claimed several times during 1896 and 1897 that he had given private demonstrations during August and September 1895, and although no documentary proof of these performances has yet been found, it seems certain that successful projection must have occurred sometime in 1895 since Acres was able to give a public performance to members of the Lyonsdown Photographic Club on Friday 10 January 1896. He gave a further showing to members of the Royal Photographic Society at 12 Hanover Square, London on 14 January; and on 21 March commercial performances began with the Kineoptikon, at 2 Piccadilly Mansions, London. On 27 June Acres secured a film of the Prince and Princess of Wales arriving at the Cardiff Exhibition, and this resulted in him being asked to give the first royal command film performance at Marlborough House on 21 July.

So far Acres had enjoyed almost continual success, and by the middle of 1896 was well placed to reap substantial financial rewards with the demand for commercial film shows, especially at music halls, rapidly increasing. But he disliked the role of a showman, and although he sold his films to other exhibitors, he disapproved of the use of film as simply a ‘turn’ inserted in a variety entertainment, believing that the future for cinematography lay in the photographic and educational markets. While Paul and others rose to the challenge of creating a new business, Acres spent much of his time between 1896 and 1899, touring the country, lecturing and giving performances to scientific and photographic societies. This brought him prestige and press coverage, but little profit, and by the end of 1897 it was clear to contemporaries that he had lost – or thrown away – the lead that he had once had. In an attempt to improve his fortunes, he introduced the Birtac, a 17.5 mm combined camera and projector. Targeted at the amateur photographic market, it was available from October 1898. The Birtac was a genuine innovation, and miniaturization represented a significant advance, both technically and conceptually, but unfortunately the instrument only had limited success, and Acres returned to 35 mm filmmaking (to 1900), and to a film-coating, developing and printing business that he had established in July 1897. Serious-minded and a perfectionist, Birt Acres was a clever and inventive man, and far more committed to the future of film than most of his contemporaries; but he was perhaps temperamentally unsuited to life as an entrepreneur. Although connected with the film business until his death, his later years were not successful financially, and he became bankrupt in both 1909 and 1911.”

Richard Brown and Barry Anthony – A Victorian Film Enterprise: The History of the British Mutoscope and Biograph Company, 1897-1915 (Trowbridge: Flicks Books, 1999)

Robert W. Paul Presents His Theatrograph

Robert W. Paul

Robert W. Paul (1869-1943) was the foremost pioneer of the British film industry in its formative years. Before starting business on his own account in 1891, he worked in the electrical instrument shop of Elliott Brothers in the Strand, where he obtained a practical knowledge of instrument making. His main concern was producing instruments to meet the ever-growing demands of the electrical industry and in this he was remarkably successful. In addition to his achievements in the electrical field, Paul holds a unique position in the history of the early cinema. His genius and talents were such that he combined not only the roles of inventor and manufacturer, but also those of producer, exhibitor, and cinematographer. No other film pioneer ever matched his extraordinary versatility, yet Paul himself regarded his film work as just a side-line to his electrical interests.

Paul’s involvement with cinematography came about by chance, when he was asked to make replicas of Edison’s Kinetoscope, which had not been patented in England. Having agreed to manufacture the machines for his clients, Greek entrepreneurs Georgiades and Tragides, he then decided to make others for himself. The only films available were controlled by the Edison company and so in order for Paul’s Kinetoscope business to succeed, it was essential that he make his own films. With only the Kinetoscope machine and its films to go on, Paul, with the assistance of Birt Acres, designed and manufactured a cinematograph camera, now known as the Paul-Acres Camera. By 29 March 1895, the first successful English film had been shot, showing Paul’s friend Henry Short outside Clovelly Cottage, Barnet, the home of Birt Acres. Between February and June 1895 Acres went on to film other subjects for Paul. These are among the very first films made in England and were seen for the first time at the Empire of India Exhibition, Earl’s Court, where Paul had installed a number of his Kinetoscopes. At that time of course, the projection of films upon a screen was still largely unknown. After the last of these films were taken, the incompatible Paul and Acres parted company. Thereafter, each went his own independent way, Paul to ever greater success and Acres to eventual oblivion and bankruptcy.

Paul achieved screen projection at the beginning of 1896, when he published details of his first projector, the Theatrograph, in the English Mechanic for 21 February. This was the first commercially produced 35 mm film projector to be produced in Great Britain. The previous day, Paul had given a demonstration of his Theatrograph at his old technical college in Finsbury on the very same day that the Cinématographe-Lumière was shown at the Polytechnic, Regent Street. A further demonstration of the Theatrograph was given at the Royal Institution on the 28th. Its public debut occurred on 19 March at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly and two days later Paul exhibited it at Olympia. The first model of the Theatrograph had some defects, but despite its imperfections it nevertheless proved to be the prototype for the modern projector. Within a few days of the launch of the first Theatrograph, Paul produced a second improved model which he patented on 2 March 1896. In all, Paul was to design and manufacture no less than five different models before quitting the film business in 1910. Among the innovations he introduced were an intermittent mechanism based on the Maltese cross; modern-type sprockets that prevented wear on the film, and a number of features that rendered the machine fireproof. He also envisaged the mobile electric generator for fairground showmen.

After his breakup with Birt Acres, Paul did not resume film production until April 1896, when he constructed a new camera based on the design of his second Theatrograph projector. By this time screen projection was becoming the recognized way of presenting films, rendering the Kinetoscope peepshow obsolete. In addition to the various actualities shot in the streets, a little comedy called A Soldier’s Courtship was staged on the roof of the Alhambra Theatre, Leicester Square, where he was then exhibiting. This starred Fred Storey, Julie Seale, and Paul’s wife Ellen as the interloper. It became so popular that he made a second version the following year. Paul also filmed the topical events of the day and his film of the Derby of 3 June 1896 was shown at two major London theatres within twenty-four hours of the event taking place, thus marking the true beginning of the news film. Paul was one of the first English producers to realize the possibilities of cinema as a means of presenting short comic and dramatic stories and to this end he built the first studio in England, with an adjacent laboratory capable of processing up to 8,000 feet of film per day. He employed a staff of very able technicians, some of whom – G.H. Cricks, J.H. Martin, Jack Smith, Walter Booth and Frank Mottershaw – went on to achieve success in their own right. Paul’s films were some of the most technically advanced for the times, his trick films being extremely ingenious. His choice of subject matter was more varied than that of any of his contemporaries and his coverage of topical events, including the war in South Africa, was matched only by that of the Warwick Trading Company and the Mutoscope & Biograph Syndicate. By the turn of the century his film projectors were being exported to the Continent, as well as to Australia and other British Dependencies. He entirely dominated the home market and it is no wonder that he earned his title ‘Father of the British Film Industry.'”

John Barnes – The Beginnings of the Cinema in England, 1894-1901 (Exeter: University Exeter Press, 1996-1998)

Argentina

In 1896, French photographer Eugene Py was working for the Belgian Henri Lepage and the Austrian Max Glücksmann at the Casa Lepage, a photographic supplies business in Buenos Aires. The three all saw the debut of the Lumière Cinématographe in Argentina,”with a picture of the Lumiére’s, took place on 18 July 1896″ at the Teatro Odéon, only a year after its debut in Paris.

Lepage then imported the first French cinematographic equipment into the country and though Eugene Py who, using a Gaumont camera in 1897, is often credited for the first Argentine film, La Bandera Argentina (which consisted of a flag of Argentina waving in the wind at the Plaza de Mayo), but the credit belongs to Czech-Brazilian Federico Figner, who screened the first three Argentine films on November 24, 1896 (shorts depicting sights of Buenos Aires named Vistas de Palermo, La Avenida de Mayo and La Plaza de Mayo). Earning renown, Py continued to produce films for exhibition at the Casa Lepage for several years, following up with Viaje del Doctor Campos Salles a Buenos Aires (1900, considered the country’s first documentary), Llegada del Presidente de la República de Brasil Dr. Campos Salles en Buenos Aires (1900) and La Revista de la Escuadra Argentina en mayo de 1901 (1901); by that time, the first projection halls had opened, working as part of the cross-national film production, distribution and exhibition system developed by Glücksmann in Argentina, Uruguay and Chile.

The Argentine film industry has historically been one of the three most developed in Latin American cinema, along with those of Mexico and Brazil. Throughout the 20th century, film production in Argentina, supported by the State and by the work of a long list of directors and actors, became one of the major film industries in the Spanish-speaking world. Argentina has won eighteen Goya Awards for Best Spanish Language Foreign Film, which makes it the most awarded country. It is also the first Latin American country that has won Academy Awards, in recognition of the films The Official Story (1985) and The Secret in Their Eyes (2009).           – Adapted from the Wikipedia article Cinema of Argentina.

The Playlist

The films are arranged in chronological order of release date but films for which the month and day of release cannot be determined appear at the beginning of the playlist in alphabetical order. The total running time of the playlist is nearly three hours. For some reason the embedded playlist will only play the first 200 films. To see all 277 films click “Watch on YouTube”.

Next article in this series: The Year 1897 in Film.

Previous article in this series: The Birth of Cinema, 1874-1895.