Monkeyshines, No. 1

Monkeyshines No. 1 may not be the first film ever made (just as its financier, Thomas Edison, didn't really invent the movies). It is, however, one of the oldest surviving films and is believed to be the earliest film made in the United States. Indeed, Edison deserves tremendous amount of acclaim for his contributions to the art of film. Although Eadweard Muybridge and others may have pioneered what eventually became the motion picture camera, it was Edison's visionary desire to develop a device that could "do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear," and put it to commercial use, that led to the birth of films as we know them today. The Gay Nineties saw the emergence of this new art form and started to grasp at its limitless possibilities. Many of these early films are essentially short subject documentary films, dubbed "Actualities," that show snapshots of life during the final decade of the 19th century.

In 1890, film was going through its birth pangs. Edison and his team struggled to perfect a device that would create the illusion of life and movement from a series of still images. At this phase, the motion picture camera had not been invented yet. Edison's idea for projecting these images was to have a photographic filmstrip spiraling around a cylinder device (not unlike a phonograph), and the viewer would watch through a peephole kinetoscope. Monkeyshines No. 1 and No. 2 are early examples of films made using this process. At the time they were made, they were never intended for public exhibition; they were merely an internal test run of the system. Filmmakers William K.L. Dickson and William Heise shot these tests using lab worker G. Sacco Albanese as their subject. They were filmed outside Building 4 of the Edison Laboratory facility, which was used for performing iron-ore milling experiments.

These two films are impossible to review from a critical standpoint. They are not meant to be entertainment or art. They are, essentially, experiments in a new technological process. Both consist of Mr. Albanese doing little more than flail his arms, stretch, and move around for the benefit of the camera. The rudimentary technology that captured these images has not weathered the ravages of time very well, and Monkeyshines No. 1, in particular, has a very phantasmagorical effect as Albanese appears almost ghostly. Perhaps that is fitting, as these film remnants have allowed a ghostly image of him to live on over a century after the man himself passed away. Monkeyshines No. 2 is a little clearer in its presentation, but essentially more of the same. A casual viewer looking for even the tiniest shred of entertainment will walk away disappointed. However, the more intrepid film buff will likely find some interest, even if only academic, as part of a broader examination of both the origins of film and the Edison Company in particular. Either way, the story behind this early film is more interesting than the product itself, and one should approach it solely as a historical artifact.

Monekyshines, No. 1 (1890)

Monkeyshines, No. 2 (1890)

These two films by Edison, as well as a third one I haven't seen, are believed to be the very first to be shot in the United States. None of the three were meant to be seen by the public as Edison was just trying to test the cylinder of the Kinetograph format. William K.L. Dickson and William Heise are created with trying this experiment in June of 1889 or the last week of November 1890, experts debate which date is correct. Needless to say, outside a historic level, there's nothing much here to see. A few images flicker in front of our eyes and on the whole I'd say No. 2 is better as we can actually see the figure. The first test is pretty brutal and hard to figure out exactly what you're looking at.

In 1888, American inventor Thomas Alva Edison had an idea that would serve as the basis to what we now call "movies", that idea was the Kinetoscope and soon a new source of entertainment would be created by the wild imagination of Edison's team. According to history, Edison heard rumors about the invention of motion pictures (they were indeed invented in 1888 by Louis Le Prince in Leeds, England) and quickly his mind began to craft his very own devise to achieve the same effect. Edison figured out that the images had the illusion of movement because they were sequential images over a light source with a high-speed shutter, and soon put the conceptual idea on paper; however, it wouldn't be Edison who would transform Kinetoscope from an idea to a reality, the man in charge of the project would be one of Edison's most rusted workers, a Scottish man named William K.L. Dickson. The series of short films codenamed "Monkeyshines" were Dickson's first attempts to produce motion pictures.

The "Monkeyshines" films were three experimental movies shot in the Edison laboratories in order to test Kinetograph, a camera invented to shot the movies that would appear in the Kinetoscope. With the collaboration of William Heise (who would become a prolific director of Kinetoscope films), Dickson shot one of Edison's workers in front of the camera doing gestures and movements. As actual experiments of their work, this movies do not have a plot or a theme, and only consist of Edison's workers moving in front of the camera to see if their images were captured. Due to age and the poor quality of this early experiments, it is impossible to know who appears in each movie, although it is often considered that G. Sacco Albanese is the one appearing in "Monkeyshines, No. 1". (some say that it is actually John Ott, but the debate continues)

While it was never released to the public (Dickson's second movie, "Dickson Greeting" has the honor of being the first American movie to be shown), "Monkeyshines, No. 1" is indeed the very first movie shot in the United States, marking the birth of the Kinetoscope and the beginning of the age of cinema as entertainment. After this monumental invention, Dickson would dedicate his most of his work in improving his machine (including an attempt to add sound!) although he also started making the kind of short films the people wanted to see in what was now known as "The Peep Show machine". While not exactly real cinema, William K.L. Dickson's amazing invention would be another big step ahead in what would culminate in 1895, with the Lumière brothers' invention of the Cinématographe. 7/10

I have endearing respect for all these early attempts at filmaking and yet they do not all possess the same amount of interest. With Monkeyshines (whether Nos. 1 or 2) I hardly know what it is I am looking at.

Not much of anything, this "film" is a ghostly image of (probably) G. Sacco Albanese, a worker at the Edison Laboratories. It was shot by William Heise and W.K.L. Dickson, the co-inventor of the Kinetoscope, along with Thomas Edison.

The film is only a few seconds long, and it is hard to distinguish what, of anything, is going on. Of course, with being the first American motion picture, and one of the first ever, it has significant historical merit.

I rated it a 2 of out 10. Only its historical value gives it more than a 1.