The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots

The Edison company had originally begun production for the Kinetoscope parlors in the year 1894, with Scottish filmmaker and inventor William Kennedy Laurie Dickson employed to discover one of the world's first motion picture systems by Thomas A. Edison. Beginning with the earliest film tests (1890-1892) the first commercially exhibited presentation using the Kinetoscope actually took place on May 9, 1893; yet, since the Black Maria film studio for the Edison company was still being completed that year, production for the Kinetoscope parlors began in 1894. Films such as "Souvenir Strip of the Edison Kinetoscope", (retitled "Sandow No 1") "Carmencita", and many others were among the first films to be shown when the Holland Brothers' Kinetoscope parlor first opened on April 14, 1894. W. K. L. Dickson and his partner Heise then continued to work for Edison until 1895, when Dickson soon quit the company and took up a job working for American Mutoscope & Biograph. To replace Dickson, a new groundbreaking director joined to take his place: Alfred Clark, former worker for the North American Phonograph Company and director of this film.

Originally, the Edison company had started attracting popularity by filming various vaudeville acts and dance routines, which in a sense promoted the filmed performer by providing a brief sneak-peek at the act. People like Annabelle Moore, Eugen Sandow and others were some of the most popular performers of their day. However, when Clark joined the company in 1895 (which turned out to be the only year he worked for the company) these things changed. Admittedly, he did somewhat pick up where Dickson left off by shooting movies of the Leigh Sisters' and Yola Yberri's dance routines, but the majority of his output for Edison appears to have been groundbreaking, revolutionary and ahead of Georges Méliès by a year. Clark was the first one to do reenactments of Joan of Arc's execution and Capt. Smith's rescue by Pocahontas (both of which used trained actors and actually had little mini-plots) and in addition created some of the first drama films with "A Duel Between Two Historical Characters" and "A Frontier Scene". Compared to what filmmaking was like at the time and the fact that almost all the earliest Edison films were of performances, these movies were part of what changed the industry from a mere fad to a form of entertainment. Nearly all appear to be lost.

"The Execution of Mary Stuart" seems to be the only known surviving work by Alfred Clark. As such, it's important in that regard. Arguably featuring the world's first film edit (another innovation of Clark's) this brief 15-second clip features a woman (Mary Stuart, played by Robert Thomae who was the Secretary and Treasurer of the Kinetoscope company) laying her head onto a chopping block only to have it hacked off in one blow by the executioner, which is then held it up for all to see. (Since about five people on IMDb have already pointed out that it took three blows instead of one to get the head off, I won't even bother going into the historical background). Additional details include costumed actors posing as soldiers standing in the background.

The morbid subject matter should not surprise anybody. From the very beginning the Edison company had earned its reputation as being a dirty business by filming such things as scantily-clad (for the time) dancers showing their ankles and boxing (then considered a low-brow sport at the time). If you think about it , Edison could really be considered one of the main reasons motion pictures are so violent and sexy nowadays, with Hollywood and other companies producing such garbage. Instead of using editing to produce magic (like Méliès would later begin to do) the admittedly obvious edit here is used to recreate a scene which could not have been done in real life. (Many people didn't actually assume this, however; most were actually so terrified by the movie that it got to the point where they believed the woman had actually allowed herself to be killed for filming). If you don't believe how dirty they were, just check out the now-lost title of the only other candidate believably featuring the first edit: "Indian Scalping Scene" of the same year also by Clark (where the edit was no doubt probably used to show Indians scalping white men). Both candidates just go to show how the company was out to provoke and shock--and they got the expected reaction for all the work they put into it. Even so, for being possibly the first horror short and one of the first films to feature film editing, "The Execution of Mary Stuart" deserves credit as being the only surviving work of the now-forgotten pioneer Alfred Clark.

Just over a minute and the first camera trick from Edison as Mary loses her head and the executioner holds it up. Not three blows as in historical reality, just one. It is clever and it certainly quickly gets to the point! Part of where all the sneaky CGI ideas started.

This is a reenactment of the execution of Queen Mary. This clip was filmed in Edison's studio on August 28, 1895. Mary is brought to the execution block and made to kneel down with her neck over it. The executioner lifts his axe ready to bring it down. After that frame Mary has been replaced by a dummy. The axe comes down and severs the head of the dummy from the body. The executioner picks up the head and shows it around for everyone else to see. One of the first 'camera tricks' to be used in a movie. It shocked audiences in its day, but for obvious reasons it today looks quite fake. This is also one of the first if not the first film reproducing a historical scene going for the best possible realism, a description that later became a definition for a genre. This was the first film in history to use trained actors.

Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, The (1895)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

This Edison short was one of the first movies to deal with a real event and the payoff is actually very good. Mary Stuart is taken to the chopping block where she puts her head down and has it hacked off. The special effects in the film are very well done but I'm not sure if the edit is done in a good fashion or if we just can't see it because the print quality is so shaky. Either way this is nicely done and shows that there were some violent films being made back in the day. I've read that this film was pulled from various places because people actually believed that the woman gave her life for the movie. You can't help but think what these folks would feel about certain violent movies of today.

For its day, this dramatization of Mary Stuart's execution has effective and believable special effects. The combination of the macabre subject matter and the brand-new visual trick must have produced quite a reaction from its audiences in 1895, given the accounts of how early movie audiences sometimes reacted even to much milder material.

The execution scene doesn't really have much that identifies the subject as Mary, Queen of Scots, and in fact some details would be at odds with a couple of the known historical facts about her death. But in itself, it is believable enough. It's certainly possible to tell that it uses a camera trick, but it was probably very effective in its time. The surviving print is rather blurry, but in this case it almost makes it seem more believable, by making some of the rough edges a little less obvious.

Special camera effects have now become so refined that it's hard to be as impressed with those done long ago. Yet even today, once you've seen enough computer-generated images, their seams start to show too, except for the very best of them. In its day, this would have come pretty close to setting the standard.