Dream of a Rarebit Fiend

Famous fantasy short with a moral: a man spends a night stuffing himself with food and drink in a restaurant; stumbling his way home, he sees the buildings 'dancing' around him and, on arriving, things only get worse. The bed starts to shake violently as if possessed and even throws itself, with the man still tucked in, through the window (the film's single funniest bit)! Flying around town a' la Scrooge, he's sure to have learnt his lesson by the next morning.

As far as I know, the only other Porter film I've watched is THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (1903), celebrated for being the first Western; this one, then, contains a number of crude camera tricks in the contemporary style of Frenchman Georges Melies. Incidentally (and Michael Elliott is sure to raise an eyebrow or two at this!), in spite of their undeniable historical value, I can't bring myself to appreciate such primitive stuff other than as mere curiosities…

This an inventive little number from Edwin S. Porter, film pioneer and director of the groundbreaking The Great Train Robbery who, after 15 or so years in the business, just seemed to fade away. This adaptation of a Winsor Mckay cartoon is wildly inventive for its time as it follows a gluttonous drunk home from a night on the town and eavesdrops on his dreams. Porter captures the giddy drunkenness of our hero by superimposing his antics over a speeded up panning shot and it's a technique that works incredibly well. He also shows us tiny little imps standing on the headboard of the poor guy's head and jabbing him with their pitchforks before the bed turns into a bucking bronco and flies out of the bedroom window to embark on a flight over the city. This is good stuff.

After sloppily overindulging in 'Welsh rarebit' and wine, the titular 'fiend' (Jack Brawn) staggers home only to experience devilish headaches and horrifying dreams. This ancient silent comedy, directed and filmed by Edison men Wallace McCutcheon and Edwin S. Porter, was inspired by one of a series of eponymous 1904 comic strips drawn by Winsor McCay that featured the dire consequences of overconsumption of the 'beer, bread and cheese' concoction. The short is full of imaginative special effects that, although primitive by modern standards, were quite sophisticated at the time, including miniatures, stop-motion, double-exposures, mattes, and other assorted camera tricks. The overall effect is quite well-done and humorous, especially when the fiend experiences the dreaded 'bed-spins'.

A man is having a bit too much of a good time out on the town – drinking and eating far too much. He stumbles home and goes to bed but it is clear to the audience that the effects of his drinking habits are far from being out of his system.

A simple film this one but one that is interesting for its place in cinema history. The title is the plot and the first few scenes of the film are really just there to get our character into bed and falling into a drunken deep sleep. The main thing the film wants to do is how many visual effects it can then produce. In this case it achieves this really well and sets up a memorable dream sequence that is imaginative and technically impressive. As with all films from this period, it is worth keeping it in the context of the period and what other things were being done with other films. With this in the mind the film is worth seeing because it is imaginative but more than that it is technically impressive at a time when cinema was just starting to develop.

Although Edwin S. Porter is well known as the director of THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, the landmark short that combined a good story line, cross-editing and other remarkable techniques for its era, his role in American cinema history has largely been relegated to a footnote: Edison invents the motion picture camera, goes the hagiography, and Griffith comes along and perfected the story-telling of cinema. And, oh yeah, Porter directed this movie in 1902 that is actually all right.

But Porter was actually a wildly experimental cineaste. In more than 100 movies, he experimented with cross-cutting, story-telling, breaking the fourth wall -- remember at the end of THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY where the robber shoots a gun at the audience? -- and did lots of camera tricks, particularly here, where there are a couple of shots that have triple exposures.... and in an era when everything had to be done in the camera, using masks and stopwatches, he got some remarkable effects, which he used with great good humor.

This trick movie is based on Windsor McKay's DREAMS OF A RAREBIT FIEND series of cartoons. McKay did a series of cartoons based on it in the early 1920s, but this is pretty heady stuff for the era. It was Edison's blockbuster for 1906 -- they sold 192 copies of the film!