71st Regiment, N.G.S.N.Y. at Camp Wikoff

71st Regiment, Camp Wyckoff (1898)

The title of this Biograph film is exactly what you're seeing. We see several hundred soldiers walking past the movie camera as they are heading off to fight in the Spanish-American war. Obviously there's no plot or character development or anything like that but instead this film allows you to see a moment in time. I always find these old movies to be fascinating because they give you a real look at the times that they were filmed. We are watching real men getting ready to enter a battle and I can only guess that some of them that we're watching didn't come back home. It's fascinating getting to see them march, see their uniforms as well as the weapons that they would take into battle.

Back in the day, short films, actualities of the 71st State Guard Regiment mustering at Camp Wikoff near Montauk Point all the way out on Long Island was labeled just that. If you looked at it, you'd see some officers on horses, then about 300 members of the National Guard marching past, and the battle standard coming up at the end.

At the end of the 19th century, people were as capable of coming up with interesting titles as we are today ... well, almost, because they didn't have 20th century literature to quote, but they paid more attention to the Greeks and Romans, so it averaged out. So confronted with a title like this one, which is not evocative in the least, what can we conclude?

I conclude that they thought they didn't need to sell their audience. When you want a hamburger or a Wagner opera, you look for those in the menu or the theater pages. People wanted to look at the 71st Regiment.