The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots

For its day, this dramatization of Mary Stuart's execution has effective and believable special effects. The combination of the macabre subject matter and the brand-new visual trick must have produced quite a reaction from its audiences in 1895, given the accounts of how early movie audiences sometimes reacted even to much milder material.

The execution scene doesn't really have much that identifies the subject as Mary, Queen of Scots, and in fact some details would be at odds with a couple of the known historical facts about her death. But in itself, it is believable enough. It's certainly possible to tell that it uses a camera trick, but it was probably very effective in its time. The surviving print is rather blurry, but in this case it almost makes it seem more believable, by making some of the rough edges a little less obvious.

Special camera effects have now become so refined that it's hard to be as impressed with those done long ago. Yet even today, once you've seen enough computer-generated images, their seams start to show too, except for the very best of them. In its day, this would have come pretty close to setting the standard.

The Edison company had originally begun production for the Kinetoscope parlors in the year 1894, with Scottish filmmaker and inventor William Kennedy Laurie Dickson employed to discover one of the world's first motion picture systems by Thomas A. Edison. Beginning with the earliest film tests (1890-1892) the first commercially exhibited presentation using the Kinetoscope actually took place on May 9, 1893; yet, since the Black Maria film studio for the Edison company was still being completed that year, production for the Kinetoscope parlors began in 1894. Films such as "Souvenir Strip of the Edison Kinetoscope", (retitled "Sandow No 1") "Carmencita", and many others were among the first films to be shown when the Holland Brothers' Kinetoscope parlor first opened on April 14, 1894. W. K. L. Dickson and his partner Heise then continued to work for Edison until 1895, when Dickson soon quit the company and took up a job working for American Mutoscope & Biograph. To replace Dickson, a new groundbreaking director joined to take his place: Alfred Clark, former worker for the North American Phonograph Company and director of this film.

Originally, the Edison company had started attracting popularity by filming various vaudeville acts and dance routines, which in a sense promoted the filmed performer by providing a brief sneak-peek at the act. People like Annabelle Moore, Eugen Sandow and others were some of the most popular performers of their day. However, when Clark joined the company in 1895 (which turned out to be the only year he worked for the company) these things changed. Admittedly, he did somewhat pick up where Dickson left off by shooting movies of the Leigh Sisters' and Yola Yberri's dance routines, but the majority of his output for Edison appears to have been groundbreaking, revolutionary and ahead of Georges Méliès by a year. Clark was the first one to do reenactments of Joan of Arc's execution and Capt. Smith's rescue by Pocahontas (both of which used trained actors and actually had little mini-plots) and in addition created some of the first drama films with "A Duel Between Two Historical Characters" and "A Frontier Scene". Compared to what filmmaking was like at the time and the fact that almost all the earliest Edison films were of performances, these movies were part of what changed the industry from a mere fad to a form of entertainment. Nearly all appear to be lost.

"The Execution of Mary Stuart" seems to be the only known surviving work by Alfred Clark. As such, it's important in that regard. Arguably featuring the world's first film edit (another innovation of Clark's) this brief 15-second clip features a woman (Mary Stuart, played by Robert Thomae who was the Secretary and Treasurer of the Kinetoscope company) laying her head onto a chopping block only to have it hacked off in one blow by the executioner, which is then held it up for all to see. (Since about five people on IMDb have already pointed out that it took three blows instead of one to get the head off, I won't even bother going into the historical background). Additional details include costumed actors posing as soldiers standing in the background.

The morbid subject matter should not surprise anybody. From the very beginning the Edison company had earned its reputation as being a dirty business by filming such things as scantily-clad (for the time) dancers showing their ankles and boxing (then considered a low-brow sport at the time). If you think about it , Edison could really be considered one of the main reasons motion pictures are so violent and sexy nowadays, with Hollywood and other companies producing such garbage. Instead of using editing to produce magic (like Méliès would later begin to do) the admittedly obvious edit here is used to recreate a scene which could not have been done in real life. (Many people didn't actually assume this, however; most were actually so terrified by the movie that it got to the point where they believed the woman had actually allowed herself to be killed for filming). If you don't believe how dirty they were, just check out the now-lost title of the only other candidate believably featuring the first edit: "Indian Scalping Scene" of the same year also by Clark (where the edit was no doubt probably used to show Indians scalping white men). Both candidates just go to show how the company was out to provoke and shock--and they got the expected reaction for all the work they put into it. Even so, for being possibly the first horror short and one of the first films to feature film editing, "The Execution of Mary Stuart" deserves credit as being the only surviving work of the now-forgotten pioneer Alfred Clark.

Just over a minute and the first camera trick from Edison as Mary loses her head and the executioner holds it up. Not three blows as in historical reality, just one. It is clever and it certainly quickly gets to the point! Part of where all the sneaky CGI ideas started.

I have always been a big fan of movies that has shown such gruesome situations as dismemberment and bloodshed. This movie started it all with the beheading of Mary. No blood was shed even though I love chocolate (the early special effect for blood was chocolate sauce). It was also a very nice piece of history rendered by the movie industry.

This film seems to be the first edited film. It is a historical reenactment of the 8 February 1587 execution for treason of the deposed monarch. In it, Mary kneels before the executioner, and once he raised his axe, the filmmakers (Alfred Clark and William Heise) stopped filming. (Interestingly, Mary is portrayed by a man--a relic dating back to Elizabethan and Shakespearian times when women were barred from the stage. This is even odder because the Edison Company had since introduced female stage performers to the movies.) They replaced Mary with a dummy and resumed filming--creating a jump cut. The executioner promptly beheads her. In post-production, the filmmakers spliced the shots together to create a seamless, that is, invisible transition; at least, that was their hopeful intention.

Today, the splice is quite noticeable (although maybe not if you're viewing an Internet transfer) if you look for it (in the lower half of the frame), as are the differences in proportion and position of the actor and the dummy. Given the technical limitations of 1895, however, it's effective. Méliès and many others did the same thing for years afterwards, including most popularly in the trick films. In "The Great Train Robbery", released eight years later, the replacement of an actor with a dummy is more obvious than here, and it is so with many other later films, so the filmmakers here did well. The splice probably wasn't too noticeable when viewed through the Kinetoscope peephole viewer, as originally intended, either.

This must have been quite an effective film for its time, but the apocryphal stories are dubious. One of them, told at this web page's trivia, is that spectators believed a real murder was committed for the camera. Another is that some fainted during viewings. There are many anecdotes like this for various early films, but they're generally not this far fetched. I haven't read any credible evidence or support for these two particular stories, either.

The introduction of editing is of immense historical importance to film. It is exclusive to this medium--distinguishing it further as a unique art and opening not only opportunities for temporal reordering, but also (in later movies) for further spatial dimensions. Without it, the story film--cinematic narrative--is hopeless. It took a while for filmmakers to realize this, though. After this film, the Edison Company went back to filming single shot pictures. The earliest films with spatially separate scenes didn't begin appearing until about 1898, which not coincidently, coincides with the adoption in cameras and projectors of the Latham Loop: a device that relieves tension and vibration from the moving filmstrip that otherwise might tear it, thus allowing for longer and edited films. Economics was also a major factor in the sluggish advancement in multi-shot films, as exhibitors, and not producers, largely controlled the final appearance of film back then--supporting the single-shot film for longer than technical limitations demanded.

In addition to production and post-production innovations, the filmmakers here also gave care to pre-production matters. According to Gordon Hendricks, and contrary to Charles Musser (both authorities on the subject), this film was shot in the environs of West Orange, rather than on the lot of the Edison Laboratory. Although the Kinetograph camera was bulky, the Edison Company had filmed several subjects outside before. Hendricks, however, suspects that this film was photographed with a new, more portable camera. The novelty here, however, is its attempt at dramatic realism that is its historical reenactment (perhaps the earliest such film). Thus, also for possibly the first time, this film features professional, theatrical actors. Additionally, as evidenced by an extant document (provided by Hendricks in "The Kinetoscope"), Clark was involved in the precise costume decisions and devised cautious planning for weather conditions. Although these innovations in the production of a reenactment aren't as cinematically innovative as editing and are, really, rather theatrical, they nonetheless were also important steps towards the development of film narrative and the increasingly elaborate nature of film production.

Today, this film seems inadequate; without its title and producers' descriptions, who would know that's it's a historical reenactment; that could be the beheading of anyone. There's also the lack of blood. As to historical accounts, it's not as interesting as other stories, which include two or three chops of the axe--perhaps, intentional, and, perhaps, clumsy. When the executioner holds up her head, there's no wig. This is a clean and simple execution. Additionally, the edit is a jump cut intended to be invisible in joining together two scenes that are spatially the same. Yet, it wouldn't be until about 1898 that action across spatially separate scenes emerged. It would be the Edison Company, however, that probably introduced multiple perspectives, with such films as "Return of Lifeboat" (1897).

The two filmmakers of "The Execution", though, deserve mentioning in the history books. The innovations of this film seem to have been mostly the work of its director Alfred Clark. He had just transferred from Raff & Gammon (the financiers of many Edison Company films), where he had been working in the phonograph business--another Edison invention. In a short span, Clark made several historical films, including "Joan of Arc" (1895) on the same day. Predictably, that film is about the saint's execution by burning. He would make few others before returning to the phonograph business.

William Heise co-invented the Kinetograph and Kinetoscope and thus motion pictures. With William K.L. Dickson, who had recently left Edison for Biograph and cinema, they made some of the earliest films ever made. Heise's name is behind many firsts in film.

(Note: This is the fourth in a series of my comments on 10 "firsts" in film history. The other films covered are Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge (1888), Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895), La Sortie des usines Lumière (1895), L' Arroseur arose (1895), L'Arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat (1896), Panorama du Grand Canal vu d'un bateau (1896), Return of Lifeboat (1897) and Panorama of Eiffel Tower (1900).)