My review was written in October 1982 after a New York Film Festival screening.
Charles Musse's "Before the Nickelodeon" is a well-researched, informative documentary on Edwin S. Porter's contribution to cinema during the formative years 1896-1909. Including a compilation of Porter's own early films, picture amplifies and illustrates beyond any written essay on the subject and will have a useful impact in educational and non-theatrical media.
Porter is known by students as a film pioneer responsible for the widely seen "The Great Train Robbery" picture of 1903. Musser carefully traces his career and many significant contributions, as a director and executive working for Thomas Edison.
Incorporating a brief history of early U. S. film exhibition, at such venues as New York's Eden Musee, film shows how Porter functioned at times as either a filmmaker, shooting stories around the turn of the century drawn from newspaper headlines and political cartoons, or as an editor, preparing 30-minute programs from short films and slides for exhibition. (By 1907, with the proliferation of nickel theatres, attendance of 1,000,000 people per day for half-hour programs was achieved).
Porter's expanding his pictures from one-shot to multiple shot films exemplifies the gradual assumption of editorial control by the producer, rather than the exhibitor who initially put together film programs in a variety show format. Porter's two-shot film satirizing Teddy Roosevelt hunting mountain lions and 3-shot "The Appointment" are include by Muse as well as the fascinating 10-shot "Jack and the Beanstalk". Excerpts from Georges Melies's "Bluebeard" and "A Trip to the Moon" indicate the French fattasist's influence upon Porter's technique.
Porter's contribution at developing "overlapping continuity", a device where the same action is shown twice in succession from two different points-of-view (e.g., inside and outside a building) is beautifully illustrated by Musser with the film "The Life of an American Fireman". First showing the film in a 1930s re-edited version having modern parallel editing (cross-cutting back and forth with matched shots in and out of the burning building), Musser then shows the film the way Porter originally made and distributed it, with an entire rescue sequence viewed first from inside the burning room and then repeated in long shot outside.
Musser notes that early audiences would have been confused by editing techniques accepted today, and that the overlapping continuity dominated the industry until 1908. "Before the Nidkelodeon" concludes with Porter's 1907 picture "Rescued from an Eagle's Nest", starring D. W. Griffith, whose work as a filmmaker was soon to eclipse Porter's.
Musser cuts off his narrative at this poing for obvious dramatic effect, briefly reporting that Porter lost his job as production executive at Edison's Bronx studios but continued making films until 1915. Despite its title and emphasis, Musser's film would have been more thorough had he mentioned and excerpted some of Porter's later efforts, such as versions of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", "The Count of Monte Cristo" and "The Prisoner of Zenda".
Picture is aided by beautifully tinted, still photographs executed with care by Elizabeth Lennard, as well as authentic music drawn from the period. Blanche Sweet skillfully delivers the narration, though ironically her career as a silent star was developed under Griffith, starting after Porter's heyday. Gimmick of having a host of contemporary film directors ranging from D. A. Pennebaker to Milos Forman, deliver some of the voice-ove historical memoirs is a show of solidarity with their screen forebears but adds little to the film.
Film was funded with aid from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts.
