Les chats boxeurs

Sandow (1894)

Carmencita (1894)

Boxing Cats (1894)

Caicedo With Pole (1894)

Annabelle Butterfly Dance (1894)

Cockfight, no. 2 (1894)

These six shorts from Edison, still early in the movie game, are rather interesting because of the self promoting factor in them. It's clear a few famous folks thought appearing in movies might bring more people to their actual show and on that level these shorts remain very interesting today. That's especially true when you consider the lack of footage of such acts. Sandow is Eugene Sandow, the man who claimed to be the strongest in the world. Shot on March 6, 1894, we see Sandow flexing in various ways in front of the camera. I'm not sure what he was thinking at the time of shooting but seeing this today is quite a laugh. Carmencita is the famous dancer doing her belly dance on screen making her the first woman to appear in an American movie. The film has become somewhat famous over the past several years because of various documentaries doing studies about early sexuality and how it caused so much controversy. This film, as innocent as they come, did strike a bit of outrage when originally released so it's fun to look at with that in mind. It's also worth noting that this was the first movie listed on the IMDb. Boxing Cats would have PETA members throwing a fit today but in 1894 seeing two animals fight, in a funny manor, was quite entertaining. Prof. Welton can be seen in the center of the frame directing his two cats, with boxing gloves on, to fight. This is actually pretty funny and it's worth noting that the cats throw more punches than a lot of the real fights that were filmed around this time with humans. Caicedo With Pole has hire-wire specialist Juan Caicedo jumping, bouncing and flipping on his wire, which must have been an amazing site when originally released. Annabelle Butterfly Dance features the famous Annabelle Moore dancing around a stage in a white outfit with wings attached. This here probably remains one of the most viewed shorts from this era with its images being shown throughout the world when it comes to exploring early cinema. Cockfight, no. 2 would be controversial today as it features two birds going after one another while two men in the background make bets. This was actually a remake so to speak as the original film was released earlier in the year and was apparently so popular that the prints wore out, which caused the studio to make this version. Apparently the original version didn't feature the men in the background.

You thought Charlie Chaplin invented slapstick? Pfah! How typical. I bet your favorite show is MTV as well, isn't it? And you listen to 50 Cent? Kids these days.

This Edison short is hilarious, although you have to be very tired when watching it. Exhausted, in fact. But it will get a laugh out of anyone who enjoys silly comedy in the vein of Dumb and Dumber, Monthy Python, etc.

10/10. The first, and one of the funniest, comedies I've ever seen. Great sight gags and the film doesn't go on so long it wears out its welcome.(r#11)

"fWhen "movies" first began""...... I am tired of hearing it. Can we please stop patronising the past. In 1894 they filmed novelty acts just as they would continue to do throughout the decade and beyond. The genre became particularly common iafter the inroduction of the newreel and the "magazine" (c. 1909) and the highpoint for this kind of spectacle in the cinema probably occurrs in the twenties and thirties when such material filled the newreels shown certainly with other films but also shown in the many specialist newsreel cinemas which continued to exist until the advent of television. After which such novelty items continued to be filmed in just the same way for the small screen and they are today to be found all over the internet. There has been no very noticeable change in the nature of such films at any time.

This is not a every wonderful film. Edison films are extremely poor both with respect to quality and content compared with the work, just a few years later, of the Lumière operators in France which effectively pushed Edison and the rival Mutoscope company both to abandon peephole exhibition and to broaden and improve the content and quality of their films. But novelty acts involving acrobats, magicians, trained animals and so on remained part of the repertoire of all film companies until the 1910s when they began to be included in the newsreels and film magazines where they would remain until the advent of television. All that changes is the way the repertoire is organised and then the particular medium that transmits them. To confirm this fact, jsut do a google search for "boxing cats"....

What was one of the biggest ways to cash in when it came to the motion picture industry? Simple answer: steal the popularity of other attractions, one of the best things the Edison Co. was good at. This is not at all to say that the great inventor was a crook who would do anything to get money (although some people who believe he actually did electrocute that elephant would say that) but it is true that during the company's earliest years in the filmmaking business, he would often hire athletes and performers who were huge hits at the time to come down to the Black Maria studio in New Jersey and do their routine for film. For the sake of protecting the man, I'd vouch it was not a way to steal away the glory of the performer but probably more for the sake of those who never had a chance to view the act for themselves. In this way, Edison would not really be taking all the fame for himself but instead advertising the sensation through the new motion picture system.

"Boxing Cats" is a good example of such a film. In this case, Edison hired Henry Welton (a professor of sorts, though I don't know of what) to come down to his studio in order to have his boxing cats act be filmed. Shown in medium closeup, the comical match (that is, comical to everyone except PETA members) is a twenty-second clip showing the cats going at it, while Welton stands in the background acting as the referee. Furthermore, because of the utter hilarity of the little gloves on the cats and the way they swipe at each-other, some consider this to be the first LOLcat video ever made and thus the oldest 'cat video' on the internet. From my own research this is certainly debatable, however; after all, Etienne-Jules Marey had created "Falling Cat" the same year with his chronophotographic gun, which could also be given the title despite the fact I know no dates to prove which came first. Clearly whoever started such a rumor has been little educated about this point in history or merely doesn't consider Marey's film a LOLcat video.

However, the most interesting point of "Boxing Cats" comes not from the historical interest surrounding it or the fact it shows a once-popular act of the day, but from the way it combines two different genres used previously in Edison company shorts to create a different variation. As I mentioned before, filming dancers, athletes or any sort of performers would help bring publicity to the sensation's act. This genre, the performance-for-camera genre, is the first one combined. On top of that, another big genre, which I treat differently from the performances, was boxing. Edison loved filming boxing and must have made a whole series of boxing shorts featuring known boxers performing a championship match within the Black Maria. Films such as "Corbett and Courtney Before the Kinetograph", "The Leonard-Cushing Fight", "The Hornbacker-Murphy Fight", even the camera tests "Men Boxing" (1891) and "Boxing" (1892) all fall within the genre. Thus, by putting both together, you have a unique little performance which was no doubt a real hit when shown in the Kinetoscope parlors. On a side note, this wasn't the first time the company had done a variation on the boxing genre; the idea of having a comedic boxing contest between animals had occurred as early as "Monkey and Another, Boxing" (camera test, 1891).

Two cats, performers from Professor Welton's Cat Circus, paw at each other with boxing gloves on. I found them rather amusing and cute. The cats seem very well trained and the way they swing their paws actually looks somewhat like a boxing match. Boxing was a very popular sport in the 1890s and this parody was a big hit with kinetoscope viewers.

The Boxing Cats was directed by William Kennedy Laurie Dickson and William Heise at Thomas Edison's Black Maria studio in West Orange, New Jersey. Even in 1894, footage of cats doing amusing things was a big hit.