Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze

I have seen this film numerous times in documentaries about the history of the silent film. I have always loved the history of the silent film and this is undoubtedly the seed from which some of the great comedies of our time have been based. I feel sneezing (nowadays) has become an overdone gimmick in comedies and this film started it even though I laughed at it. My final word on this film is this, IT BLEW ME AWAY!!! (HA HA)

Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (1894)

**** (out of 4)

If entertainment is what you're seeking then don't take my four-star review meaning a great movie. The word entertainment might not fit too well with these early films but on a historical level this here is one of the all time greats. Running just five seconds we see a man sneeze. Yes, that's all there is to it. This is famous for many reasons including it being one of the earliest films made by Edison. According to records it was filmed on January 7th, 1894 and became the first movie to have a copyright two days later.

One story has it that, in 1877, railroad tycoon Leland Stanford and a pal were having drinks on Stanford's California stud farm, when one or the other of them wondered aloud whether or not a galloping horse ever had all four hooves off the ground.

Stanford directed his chief researcher to find out. In turn, the researcher hired Eadweard Muybridge (real name: Edward Muggeridge) a landscape photographer of note, to set up 24 cameras with trip wires along a track. A horse ran through the wires, tripping the shutters of the cameras, and the resulting photographs showed that, indeed, all four of the horses' hooves were off the ground for quite a while. When viewed rapidly in sequence, these photos were the precursor to "motion pictures".

What was needed of course, was film that moved through the camera, and several people created cameras and projectors (sometimes the same device) that did this, but all had various shortcomings.

Thomas Edison directed his employee, a Scotsman named W. K. L. Dickson (who would later go on to found Biograph Pictures), to study the inferior machines then in use, and come up with something better. He did, sort of, and he (under Edison's name) came up with the kinetograph (the camera), the kinetoscope (the projector) and the kinetophone (the projected film). None of these technologies were actually new, but Dickson's advances in each device resulted in a system that simply produced better looking presentations.

On April 14, 1894, at a theater on Broadway in New York City, several of Dickson's films were presented together, at an admission fee of 25 cents. The show included short films of a dancing bear, some Vaudeville pratfalls, and, . . . "Fred Ott's Sneeze", which became the very first copyrighted motion picture.

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.

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.