Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze

This ultra-short feature has historical significance in addition to its novelty value. As one of a number of surviving features that the Edison Company made not for exhibiting commercially, but as experiments or for other purposes, it is part of the interesting historical record of the very earliest stages of motion picture development.

Made just a couple of months before Edison's Kinetoscopes were opened for public viewing, this feature was originally filmed for a magazine article, in which the individual frames could illustrate the way that the Kinetoscope would produce the effect of motion. Naturally, for such a purpose they did not need or want more than a few seconds of film.

One thing that is interesting about the earliest movies is their choice of material. A good many of the Edison Company's movie subjects, whether commercial or experimental, are either offbeat or provocative. This contrasts with, for example, the early Lumière movies, which featured so many aesthetically pleasing and even lyrical sights. This subject is one of the offbeat ones, recording Edison employee Fred Ott in the act of sneezing.

For its original purpose this was a suitable subject, since the action would all be contained within a narrow camera field, and it would last only a very short time. Now, so many years later, it is useful in a different way, as a record of one of the many steps on the way to commercially-made movies. It should also be noted that the footage, very short and simple though it is, succeeds in recording motion clearly and smoothly.

This film might have been the greatest movie ever made but it is full of mysteries. I will quote some of the questions you should ask yourself while watching this movie numbering them.

1 - Is the sneeze real?

How do we know the sneeze is a real sneeze or a wonderful piece of acting by the great Ott? 2 - If the sneeze was real, what caused it?

As we know it, Ott might have been allergic to something waved in front of him by Edison himself. In this case we should feel sorry for Ott and what he went through to create this masterpiece.

3 - What does he say during the sneeze?

We don't know whether he made rude sound or a more polite sound.

4 - Did Edison even bother to say "Bless you"?

Because the sneeze is silent, I wonder did Edison at least say "Bless you" or not? Mysteries that will never have an answer. Bet you didn't think a sneeze hid so many mysteries.

Best known as Fred Ott's Sneeze, W.K.L. Dickson's short Kinetoscope should most likely be classified as some sort of documentary, although Mr. Ott's exaggerated wind-up and release come off as a little less than authentic. The novelty of moving images stunned and amazed those who saw these early subjects following their creation at Thomas Edison's famous Black Maria studio. And even though it is not the oldest film listed in the database, it was the first film to have a copyright filed on its behalf. Lasting only a few seconds, the movie itself holds a kind of rare and inexplicable fascination for lovers of film. Difficult to put into words (you could have watched the complete work a number of times in the span it takes to read this), I always feel like I am seeing the cinema's equvalent of Eve biting into the apple.

In this film, Fred Ott, an employee of Thomas Edison, takes a pinch of snuff and sneezes. It's not a particularly dramatic sneeze. In fact, if I hadn't known it was a film showing a man sneeze, I wouldn't have been sure what he was doing. It looked more like an artificially vigorous yawn after a nose scratch.

The film was made sometime in the first week of January, 1894, and was projected through Edison's Kinetoscope, a projector that only one viewer could use at a time by looking through a peephole at the top of the device. The film was actually not initially meant to be shown as a film to audiences. Rather, it was shot for publicity reasons, to generate a series of still photographs for a Harper's Weekly article. Edison and company, led by William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, had been gearing up for commercial production of films since late 1891. Fred Ott's Sneeze was an important promotional idea which was to help with this.

The film is significant for featuring the first medium close-up shot of a performer, now one of the most common types of shots used in film and television.

With "Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze" (known to most people as "Fred Ott's Sneeze" or simply "The Sneeze") the year 1894 in film began in the United States. Now that the Black Maria studio had been completed last year and the first two commercially exhibited movies had been shown at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, the Edison company was ready to take off. Shot between January 2 and 7, the film is not only the first short to feature a sneeze but also the first copyrighted motion picture in the USA when submitted to the Library of Congress.

The film features Fred Ott, a factory worker at the Edison company, who has been known to star in at least two other movies: "Fred Ott Holding a Bird" (of the same year) and later in 1900, "The Kiss". In the four-second clip, Ott, (who ever made up that last name was a riot) is shown in medium closeup as he takes a pinch of snuff which causes him to sneeze in an admittedly fake manner. The mystery surrounding the short is clear: of all things, why would you film a sneeze? Either Edison had no better ideas, he wanted to make a random movie for the sake of submitting it to the Library of Congress, or it was just a good way to test motion by filming such a quick movement. Either way you look at it, the film served it's purpose and gets my vote for the best action movie of the 1800s.

On a side note, I think Fred Ott would have been pretty mad if he knew that he is now remembered just because he sneezed, held a bird and kissed a lady. Still, he does hold his place in history and could be called the first film comedian, preceeding Chaplin and Keaton by about twenty years.