Carmencita

Watching a film like this, it becomes fairly obvious that from the very first days of the cinema the camera was to be given a voyeuristic male eye. Filmed before projectors had been invented, this 24-second short would have been viewed in a dedicated parlour through one of Edison's kinetoscopes. It's a simple film of one woman dancing in front of a black screen. She was quite famous in her day, apparently, but she isn't particularly graceful here. The film was probably shot at Edison's Black Maria studio in West Orange. It was banned in some places because of the 'daring' display of leg - and has the distinction of being title number 0000001 in IMDb's listings

This film is part of the series of short Edison films featuring circus and vaudeville acts. Subject in this movie is the American dancer Carmencita. She was quite popular as a dancer at the time and a much asked painting subject for painters. She was also the first every woman to appear in front of the camera in an Edison film, which also makes her the first every woman to appear in an American shot movie. But that's about as historically interesting as this movie gets.

The image quality isn't the greatest but the movements look at all times smooth and that's of course what was most important for Edison and Co. at the time. Camencita shows some twirling, with kicks and high arm movements. Her arms got out of the frame at times and the camera also didn't seemed to be steady. Perphaps it was standing on the same stage as Carmencita was dancing on, which caused the light camera shaking?

Interesting for those wanting to check out the early Edison Manufacturing Company films, but it's nothing too great or significant.

6/10

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Carmencita (1894)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Infamous Edison short, which features the title dancer, quite famous at the time, doing one of her dances. The film runs only 24-seconds but who today could really imagine how much trouble this film would get into with such a short running time. The movie was famous because it came under a lot of censorship issues wherever it would be played. The most famous incident happened in Boston where it was pulled from theaters after a preacher complained that it was sinful. We only see a brief bit of the dancer's leg (below the knee) so that should tell you something. There's certainly nothing great here but from a historical standpoint this is a very important film.

This short film was included several years ago in a documentary about Thomas Edison and his early movie-making experiments. It's timeless - an absolute classic!

The video itself is jumpy and splotchy, and primitive by even the earliest silent film standards. But by anyone's measure, the dancer is amazingly good, and this peek into the distant past is well worth watching, if the opportunity arises.

It would be nice if someone put together for commercial sale a collection of very early experimental film projects like this one. Few are likely to be as fascinating as this, but it's amazing to see how dramatically video technology has changed - and how relatively little change there has been in our entertainment preferences.

"Carmencita Dancing," one of a series of Edison short films featuring circus and vaudeville acts, displayed the... um... "talents" of a zaftig belly-dancer who agreed to undulate before the camera of the famous "Black Maria" studio. The dance was originally intended to be played in a Kinetoscope, a single -person arcade viewer connected to Edison's more famous invention, the phonograph. Through a pair of crude headphones, the latter device supplied an asynchronous soundtrack of "hootchie-cootchie" music. The Kinetograph camera here employed is so new -- even to its inventors -- that director Dickson has drastically "overcranked" the film, unintentionally producing one of the first examples of slow-motion. Carmencita's titillating movements were considered by many to be scandalous. Thus, the film prompted some of the earliest discussions of film censorship.