The Barbershop

Blacksmith Scene (1893)

Barber Shop, The (1893)

These two Edison shorts are more "film like" than previous items from the studio, which were pretty much just camera tests. In the first film we see three men hammering some iron before taking a break and passing a beer around. The second short has three men sitting around a barber shop with one of them receiving a shave. Once again these two are basically going to be for those wanting to see early examples of history so coming to either one of these films for entertainment, as we use the word today, would be quite useless. I find watching these other films to be quite entertaining because of anything Edison could have filmed, they thought audiences would want to see this.

Before I discuss this film, I'd like to clear up the date discrepancy surrounding the short. On the Kino's "Movies Begin" set we aren't actually given a date to the short, as it is put in a collection of eight Edison movies that aren't in chronological (since "The Kiss" comes at the beginning and this is near the end of the list). Yet on the same company's "Edison: Invention of the Movies" it has been listed as being an 1893 short, made the same year as "Blacksmith Scene" and "Horse Shoeing" which I do not believe to be correct. If "The Barber Shop" was from 1893, it would have been among the first several publicly exhibited movies. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I've read before that the other two titles were the only known productions made by Edison that year. The evidence backing up the 1893 theory is probably because all three productions attempt to recreate a scene of everyday life in a studio--and they all seem connected together in that regard.

Moving on, I will explain what I meant by that first advertising movie comment. Yes, this movie was never really recognized as such, and certainly it doesn't appear to be a commercial of any sort outright, but I think that, known or not, the advertising concept was clearly in Edison's mind when he had Heise and Dickson film this. Let's start with the fact that the shave and a haircut for a nickel fad was, I believe, still quite fairly new when this movie was shot. It was a deal no one should have passed up. And so, thinking that he should alert the U.S. of this amazing bargain, Edison combined the two things in one--the haircut and the motion pictures. In this way, he would, shall we say, be able to cash in on charging the public to view his movie, while also spreading the news of this fantastic deal. In this way, both the barber and the company would be happy with the process. The signs of the advertising concept are quite obvious--the sign stating the deal makes the point clear, the comicality of the view amuses the audience to make it entertaining. Don't we do the same today? Like this short, we, with our fancy technology, are able to entertain while advertising our own products. And that is what I mean when I call this the first commercial.

Additionally, more historical value is attributed to this movie when you consider how early it was made (1893 or 1894, it doesn't matter). Edison's later works in 1894 and 1895 were mostly performance acts of famous dancers and athletes. Bearing that in mind, this is where "Blacksmith Scene", "Horse Shoeing" and this film come in. All three have simple brief narratives, all three attempt to tell a miniature plot within the brief run-time. And thus, all three are responsible for being the first staged narratives. What else can I say? Even in 1893 Edison was way ahead of the Lumiere Brothers when it came to narrative development.

This is a 40-second long Edison Company kinetoscope short. Four men play out the scene. One is sitting in a barber's chair getting a shave and a haircut. Another is the barber working on him. The third and fourth flank the barber on either side of the frame, positioned in front of the barber chair and cabinet. The scene actually lasts only 20 seconds, but is repeated in full.

Some sources date The Barber Shop to mid-1893 or earlier, and some sources consider it to be "pre-commercial" (that is, prior to an intention for the film to be exhibited commercially on the kinetoscope). While this may indeed be the case, it's unusual in that The Barber Shop is clearly a staged scene; one that is more complex than some of the commercial Edison Company shorts, such as Sandow (1894) and The Cock Fight (1894).

This is one of the more successful shorts of the era. While it presents a scene that ostensibly might be an actuality (actualities were something like cinematographic records of everyday scenes), closer examination reveals that the scenario is extremely artificial and directed. For example, there are props that are arranged in exact spots to create maximum effect in the frame of the camera. More notably, each "actor's" motions appear to be precisely planned and directed; they're almost choreographed. The actions provide a fascinating contrapuntal mise-en-scene--each performer is constantly moving, and even inanimate motion is incorporated by way of the smoke from the pipe.

The two men flanking the customer stand up at one point and move to the middle of the frame, blocking the view of the barber and customer. All of this complicated motion allows for a repetition that most people do not notice on a first viewing (it took me a couple viewings to notice--I didn't catch it until I switched to a more analytical mode), despite the fact that the man on the left is obviously taking off his coat and hat and sitting down once again. You don't notice because your eye is busy darting around the frame, trying to take all of it in at once.

The staging is similar to Glenroy Brothers (Comic Boxing) (1894), but more complex. In the Glenroy Brothers short, the "rear guard" sit motionless, more props than persons. The Barber Shop's approach to creating a "realistic scene" involving a number of people has been much emulated in later films, down to the present, and was subsequently honed artistically to a point that many people no longer noticed the artificiality of the "background action".

The Barbershop is another short that I saw on the Landmarks of Early Film DVD. A guy walks up to a barbershop, a man is getting shaved, and another man is there reading the newspaper. The newspaper reading man says something to the waiting man and they both start laughing. Then the shave is done. It lasts about 20 seconds. Then the whole scene is repeated again! The exact same scene. It took me a few seconds to realize that I was watching the same thing twice. Although this short doesn't have the amazing insight and stuff of the Lumiere shorts, and seems much more planned and acted, and the insight into the life in only the most narrow of forms, I thought it was a delightful little short, pointing out the hilarious repititions of every day life.

My grade: 7/10

Yes those were the days when you could get a shave and a haircut for a nickel (according to the sign behind the barber). This barber shop is on the stage in the Black Maria studio - so called because, to some people, the weird design of this building made them think of a horse-drawn police paddy-wagon that was called a "Black Maria" - at the Edison laboratory. The barber is working on a customer while a man sits screen-right. Another customer enters and sits in a vacant chair screen-left. The man-on-the-right gets up and briefly shows the man-on-the-left something in the newspaper he is holding. All this takes about 20-seconds. Then for some unknown reason, the entire scene is shown over again to produce a 40-second Kinetoscope presentation.