Rip Leaving Sleepy Hollow

1903's "Rip van Winkle", directed by W. K. L. Dickson, may be one of the first films, if not the first, that has an actual plot. Originally, it was actually a film serial comprised of eight short films from 1896 that, when put together, more or less tell the well-known story by Irving. Of course, looking at each of them separately you can't at all get the full feel of what Dickson was going for, due to every clip being only about twenty seconds long and telling only a very small fraction of the plot. Likewise here.

"Rip Leaving Sleepy Hollow" is the fourth film in the series and pretty much nothing happens in it, except that Rip (Joseph Jefferson) enters a ring of dwarfs (really grown men hunching over) and just stands around. The dwarfs do wear costumes in it, which is something rare for the era, but that's really all you can say for this segment when taken out of context. With that said, even when you do put it in context with its other seven installments, it still won't really interest anyone except film buffs like me, or historians interested in the early years of film.