The Gay Shoe Clerk

I suppose today 'The Amorous Shoe Clerk' would be a more accurate title for this one-scene comedy film from film pioneer Edwin S. Porter. It's quite an amusing little skit, featuring an early screen kiss and an early use of the close-up. Apart from this and, as another reviewer has pointed out, the need for care in the timing to make the joke work, the film is fairly unremarkable. Nevertheless every film, no matter how short, deserves at least ten lines according to the powers at IMDb, so here I am typing away and hoping for the best before I press the Preview button... Damn... Porter sort of faded away, you know. He was the biggest thing in movies during much of its first decade but, like Griffith 20 years later, he failed to evolve in line with the cinema. (surely that must be enough?)

The idea here is pretty simple, but it is set up rather well, and thus the movie is amusing enough despite the limited material and running time. Early film-makers often made watchable pictures just by taking a basic idea like this, thinking of an appropriate setting, and pacing it out properly. Something like this might be used a brief scene in a movie of the present time, but in its own era it stands up well enough on its own.

The story starts with the shoe clerk waiting on a flirtatious young woman, and it then follows the subsequent developments. Nothing fancy or brilliant, but it did require some care, planning, and timing to make it work. It is also a very simple example demonstrating that it is possible to convey characters' amorous intentions by very simple means, without using explicit material.

The birth of cinema came to be for the pure value of a viewer having the capability to escape to another world without actually travelling there in real-time. As cinema evolves so does its various techniques. Films started out as series photography which Edward Muybridge perfected. With the emergence of cinema, many directors who were photographers previously came to play in the field of cinema. Directors however thought of new ways to amplify their techniques to create an even better form of visual pleasure for their films. How is this film not relevant? This is first multi-shot film with 3 full shots and it uses a Point of view shot as one of them. People need to really think before they talk. This film is a great achievement at the time.

I have used this short silent clip as part of my lessons on the history of cinema with my American History students. And while it isn't the most exciting or technically adept film of the day, it's pretty funny today and shows hard far our sexual mores have changed in only about a century. It's really great as social commentary.

Two ladies enter a shoe store. The younger one tries on a shoe. As the salesman places it on her, he exposes her ankle and even a tiny portion of her calf!! And, naturally, he loses control of himself and attacks her--only to be beaten into submission by the older woman! Funny stuff and the teens I teach think it's a real hoot!

Gay Shoe Clerk, The (1903)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

This Edison short is probably one of the better known films from this era. It shows a shoe clerk working when two ladies, apparently a mother and daughter, come into the store. The clerk is putting a shoe on the younger woman who raises her dress where he gets to see a bit of her leg, which makes him lean forward and kiss her only to have the other woman attack him. That's pretty much all we've got here but I guess you could call this one of the earliest sex comedies as it appears the film certainly wants to show off the sexiness of the woman raising her dress. It's also worth noting that the legend of D.W. Griffith inventing the close-up is pretty much thrown out the window here as the lifting of the dress is done so with a close-up. You certainly can't compare this to more current sex comedies but even though this is over 100-years-old it's still pretty funny.