The Barbershop

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.

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.

The Barbershop is another short that I saw on the Landmarks of Early Film DVD. A guy walks up to a barbershop, a man is getting shaved, and another man is there reading the newspaper. The newspaper reading man says something to the waiting man and they both start laughing. Then the shave is done. It lasts about 20 seconds. Then the whole scene is repeated again! The exact same scene. It took me a few seconds to realize that I was watching the same thing twice. Although this short doesn't have the amazing insight and stuff of the Lumiere shorts, and seems much more planned and acted, and the insight into the life in only the most narrow of forms, I thought it was a delightful little short, pointing out the hilarious repititions of every day life.

My grade: 7/10

Yes those were the days when you could get a shave and a haircut for a nickel (according to the sign behind the barber). This barber shop is on the stage in the Black Maria studio - so called because, to some people, the weird design of this building made them think of a horse-drawn police paddy-wagon that was called a "Black Maria" - at the Edison laboratory. The barber is working on a customer while a man sits screen-right. Another customer enters and sits in a vacant chair screen-left. The man-on-the-right gets up and briefly shows the man-on-the-left something in the newspaper he is holding. All this takes about 20-seconds. Then for some unknown reason, the entire scene is shown over again to produce a 40-second Kinetoscope presentation.

This simple footage of "The Barbershop" is pleasant to watch, and like many other features of its time, it preserves forever a view of a once-familiar scene. In itself, the action is nothing exciting, but the camera is positioned well, and for such a short running time it does capture many details. Like a carefully composed still picture, it presents every aspect of the scene, while in this case showing you the complete action of the doings that it depicts.

Originally, the film-makers set out to capture a scene that their audiences would have observed every day. But, like a number of movies of its era, it now allows us to get a more intimate view of ways of life that are no longer common to our experience – in this case, to feel what it was like to visit an old-fashioned barber shop of the era. The footage does well in conveying this feel, capturing not only the man getting a shave, but also the leisurely interactions in the foreground – an efficient and well-conceived piece of cinematography.

The double footage may seem like something of an odd idea, but it would be interesting to know how many of its original viewers noticed it. And, beyond that, we are quite fortunate that the earliest film-makers had such a spirit of experimentation, and that they were so willing to try even offbeat ideas. Early efforts such as this, as plain as it may now look to some viewers, did more than their part in getting cinema history moving.