Newark Athlete

An athlete swings Indian clubs.

There is not much to say about this because it is very brief, very damaged and not much happens -- a pair of clubs spin a couple times. I suspect this was an important early film test, but it is in such awful shape today that it pretty much negates whatever value it has as historic.

I have to wonder how Edison and Dickson went about choosing their earliest subjects. Why a man with clubs? For how brief the film is, he could have been jumping rope or swinging a bat. It really makes no difference because he is not given enough time to really exhibit any skill.

according to the edison motion pictures site this was an experimental picture to test new equipment and new techniques more than anything else.

the film is a small fragment of a boy swinging his clubs. part 1 is the original and part 2 is the looped version. all this will make a bit more sense when you see fragment 2 where all the material was composed together by gordon hendricks.

the film looks scary like eraserhead, only missing the noise typical for lynch :) not as interesting as some of the other early heise/dickson works, but worth seeing.

Newark Athlete (1891)

Men Boxing (1891)

Newark Athlete is just a brief fragment from the Edison studio, which was apparently just a set up test to check the conditions on the camera. The thing only lasts a few seconds so needless to say the studio wasn't trying to make anything special out of it but thankfully the thing survives so film buffs such as myself can view the early history of film. Men Boxing on the other hand seems to be the studio actually trying to put something fun on film. Two men, both wearing boxing gloves, throw a few punches at one another while smiling for the camera. Some think this once again was just testing the camera but since it contains a tad bit more I'm going to guess the men making it thought this could be something real.

This ultra-short feature is one of a small number of surviving experiments made by the Edison Company in the same year as the well-known "Dickson Greeting" film. As such, it is simple but successful, accomplishing its goal of capturing the motions of its subject while also providing a clear image of him.

The footage simply shows one athlete or gymnast who makes a movement with a pair of clubs. The movie succeeds in photographing the subject in some detail, and in capturing the motion smoothly. The motion is equally clear at each of the speeds in the preserved footage. These are simple goals, to be sure, but they are basic foundations of cinema, and they had to be met before the new invention could be used for more complex and interesting movies.

In 1894, when the Edison Company was expanding its film production for commercial use in their Kinetoscopes, a similar camera test was done with the newer equipment then in use. That film, "Athlete With Wand", served a similar purpose, and it is of interest in comparison with this one.

In compare with other Edison (Dickson) installaments, this footage for me is poorest (eventually better than Monkeyshines). Quality is bad and in comparison with Men's Boxing it doesn't show any progress, quite to the contrary. Good things that film brings to me is increasing of my general knowledge. Until now I have no idea what Indian clubs are and what is their purpose. Second thing about that movie is that this movie was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It is currently the oldest film chosen to be in this Registry.