Carmencita

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 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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Objectively, there's nothing really WRONG with this film. It sets out to do something extremely simple, and it achieves that goal flawlessly, but that goal isn't really compelling unless one accounts for the film's age. It is said that this isn't only one of the first films ever made, but also one of the earliest films to feature a female "star" I suppose. I'm not sure how true this claim is, but it's not very hard for me to believe. The actress featured in this film is rather charming and dances in a vivid and exuberant manner, making this film be one of slight excitement thanks to the wild, cheerful movements made. It'definitely be really boring if it were an hour, but films of such a length were unheard of back in this day, so dwelling on such hypothetical situations is quite pointless. All in all, this is a pretty enjoyable way to spend less than a minute of your time and is recommended for fans of film in general as it is short and enjoyable enough to intrigue almost anyone.

In Carmencita, we get the story of a dance, and that's all. It's a great thing that the first woman who was ever photographed on celluloid was seen doing what she loves, doing it relatively well (I can't judge how the dancing was by 1894 standards, but she never appears to slip up), and is not being exploited for the sake of it. Here is a MOTION PICTURE, so here's motion and here's a picture of it. Simple. Awesome. I hope women seeing it today are empowered by it. Or if they want to scream "Patriarchy" and be mad that it's not showing a woman doing something that isn't meant to only appeal to men I understand. But it is splendid and exciting to see, especially in the not-quite 24 frame per second film speed it has been preserved at, and I think it's amazing to watch past the film history of it.

PS: on IMDb this is title url 0000001

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.