The Gay Shoe Clerk

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.

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?)

I can't understand why this is such a popular film except for the fact that it does feature an early closeup that shows clearly what is still going on in the scene. This was a technique developed by G. A. Smith in his "The Sick Kitten" and indeed this short is according to some a remake of Smith's "As Seen Through a Telescope". It's a sex comedy that is pretty harmless today but was shocking for its time. Anyway, I've seen more creative one-gag movies from early cinema but the joke here really isn't that funny and comes up very basic. The lighting is really bad which makes it come across as serious until the 'joke' at the end. One of the best things about it is that the closeup is very effective and given the surviving print, it looks very good. The joke is really cheap though.

Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Company's "The Gay Shoe Clerk" demonstrates the influence of British filmmaker George Albert Smith. This film is essentially a remake, or reworking, of Smith's "As Seen Through a Telescope" (1900); it uses the same three-shot plot, including a close-up in the middle, and the joke of a man being punished for looking at a woman's ankle while she lifts her dress. The setting was changed from a man outside using a telescope to view the leg in Smith's film to the inside of shoe store. Porter would've presumably seen Smith's film through the duping practices of the Edison Company, who stole Smith's film and distributed it as "The Professor and His Field Glass". Historian Charles Musser ("Before the Nickelodeon") says that Porter may have also been influenced by a Biograph subject, tellingly titled, "Don't Get Gay with Your Manicure" (1902/03).

More interestingly are the differences between the close-ups in Porter and Smith's films. The one in "As Seen Through a Telescope" is a masked point-of-view (POV) shot. Porter's view is not masked and is not a POV from any character's perspective, but is an ordinary ("invisible") close-up, matching-on-action, which isn't explained within the narrative, as a POV shot is. Standard film-making nowadays, but not in 1903. Yet, not even this use of the close-up was Porter's invention. The same fellow Smith had used the same kind of insert close-up in the middle of his three-shot film "The Little Doctors" (1901) (now a lost film), which he remade as "Sick Kitten" (1903). Additionally, Porter had previously inserted a close-up of a fire alarm being pulled in "Life of an American Fireman" (1903).

"The Gay Shoe Clerk" is imitative, but not deplorable as were the dupes and shot-for-shot remakes also made by the Edison Company and other studios. It remains well made for 1903 and an amusing exploitation of cinema viewing's voyeuristic nature, with the punitive gag of the character being repeatedly hit for looking at the woman's leg, while we moviegoers get away unscathed.

For some reason or another, I happened to catch this little flick somewhere not too long ago.

It is basically a shoe salesman that is seduced by a women customer's good looks (who, by today's standards, really doesn't look that great at all) and proceeds to help her try on shoes. Part of the woman's dress slips and shows a third of her leg, which then the camera cuts to the man's face showing a really goofy suprised look on his face. Then the manager comes around and smacks him with an umbrella. Ouch!

Judging by the fact it was mildly amusing to watch this one minute video today, I'm sure it was absolutely hilarious about 100 years ago. Pretty decent camera work considering that no one back then was really a professional "cameraman." The whole thing seems pretty Chaplin-ish. Your typical short goofy comedy. Consider it a decent camera experiment, as that's all it really is. Nothing wrong with that, I guess.