The Barbershop

The history of anything involves trying to discover the accidents of convention that stuck. Movies could have taken off from any of a number of the already mature arts: especially painting. It turned out — much the worse I fear — to have adjusted to become a continuation of drama, probably starting in earnest with "Birth of a Nation."

But here we have a very early film, an experiment really, that shows one link that continues today, the link with dance.

I'm particularly fond of modern films that reconnect with the notions of dance — especially the dancing eye of the camera — whether they have explicit dancing in them.

This is framed as a contemporary photograph, which means it inherits the painterly conventions of composition of the time. But see how well the motion is planned in two layers: a foreground and background. This comes from the dance tradition, especially the choreography of the day.

And it has stuck with us all this time as a basic rule. Pretty interesting, that. And accidental too, I surmise.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

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".

Edison innovators W.K.L. Dickson and William Heise made this short showing a slice of life from end of the nineteenth century. A man is getting a shave at a barbershop, while two other men discuss something in the foreground.

This was the best Edison film up to that point, as it feels almost like a still-life coming alive. Viewers come that time must have felt like they were watching a scene familiar to them come alive. One thing I am curious about is whether the men acting out the short scene are just Edison men fooling around, or whether they are hired actors performing a scene laid out for them.

I give it a 2 out of 10.

In 1891, Thomas Edison and his staff, led by William K. L. Dickson, successfully produced demonstration films on the Kinetograph camera, and showed them to one person at a time through the Kinetoscope projector. For 1892 and the early part of 1893, Edison and Co. Geared up for commercial production. As part of this endeavour, Dickson oversaw the building of a dedicated motion picture studio, the Black Maria. This film was one of the first ones to be made at the Black Maria.

The Barbershop, along with Blacksmithing Scene, was one of the films directed by Dickson and William Heise, at the Black Maria, in 1893. In this 22 second masterpiece, while one man gets a very quick shave, and the start of a haircut, two other actors share a bit of business involving a newspaper. These may be the first instance of background performers, or extras in a scene. Although, in this case, they are more like foreground performers. There is a lot of motion in this particular film. For the time, it was quite an ambitious film.