Monkeyshines, No. 1

From Shadow Plays to the Phenakistoscope, to the phantasmagoria of the 18th Century 'Magic Lanterns' or the spinning slits of the Phenakistoscope invented by Joseph Plateau, and the simultaneous independent invention, in 1833, by the Austrian Simon Stampfer (Stroboscope). In 1867, the Zoetrope lantern astonished the world till Muybridge's Zoopraxiscope device of 1879. The Zoopraxiscope's photographic rudiments inspired legendary inventors to invent. Thomas Edison came up with the Kinetoscope and the designer W.K.L.Dixon (sometimes spelt as Dickson) worked for Edison in the USA and then in 1894 moved to England where he helped develop the Mutoscope machines. Thus, finally, we arrive at Dickson's 'The MonkeyShines'. Dickson is significantly a part of Film history because these film shorts were widely acclaimed as The first 'movie shows', or moving picture shows. However, The Lumiere brothers in France, Auguste and Louis, produced what is arguably the first real cinema show with the presentation of their Lumiere Cinematographe to a paying audience at the Grand Cafe in Paris on 28th December 1895. The only real brouhaha between these two landmark moments in history being the issue of pioneering and the attributing factors of being billed as the 'inventors' of modern film and cinema.

This and the other "Monkeyshines" features are historically important as the remains of the Edison Company's earliest efforts to create moving pictures. The briefness of the footage of the "Monkeyshines" features hardly could reflect the many hours of intense work, thought, and trial-and-error sessions that must have gone on, but they do preserve a picture of where things were at.

The footage itself now looks weird and surreal, which was of course not at all the effect that Edison and his associates were striving for. The film actually shows one of the Edison Company workers simply goofing around for a few moments, making as many movements as possible, as the camera filmed him. The images are all indistinct, resembling specters or ghosts, and the footage has suffered many scratches and other damage over time, giving it a truly bizarre appearance that would be extremely difficult to duplicate intentionally.

Edison's original conception for moving pictures was an adaptation of his highly successful phonograph, that is, he planned to use a cylindrical approach rather than the projection format that we are familiar with. The distortion and blurring of the images reveal some of the inherent difficulties in the process, and eventually this would point them in the right direction.

In a way, it's appropriate that the record of these experiments now looks surreal and shadowy. Edison and the other pioneers of his era went through a shadowy phase in which the idea for lifelike moving pictures seemed so close, yet not quite attainable. It must have been a tantalizing and occasionally frustrating feeling for them to view the "Monkeyshines" movies and see what they had and had not yet achieved. For anyone today who is interested in the development of motion pictures, these early results can be an equally tantalizing look at the past.

Monekyshines, No. 1 (1890)

Monkeyshines, No. 2 (1890)

These two films by Edison, as well as a third one I haven't seen, are believed to be the very first to be shot in the United States. None of the three were meant to be seen by the public as Edison was just trying to test the cylinder of the Kinetograph format. William K.L. Dickson and William Heise are created with trying this experiment in June of 1889 or the last week of November 1890, experts debate which date is correct. Needless to say, outside a historic level, there's nothing much here to see. A few images flicker in front of our eyes and on the whole I'd say No. 2 is better as we can actually see the figure. The first test is pretty brutal and hard to figure out exactly what you're looking at.

In 1888, American inventor Thomas Alva Edison had an idea that would serve as the basis to what we now call "movies", that idea was the Kinetoscope and soon a new source of entertainment would be created by the wild imagination of Edison's team. According to history, Edison heard rumors about the invention of motion pictures (they were indeed invented in 1888 by Louis Le Prince in Leeds, England) and quickly his mind began to craft his very own devise to achieve the same effect. Edison figured out that the images had the illusion of movement because they were sequential images over a light source with a high-speed shutter, and soon put the conceptual idea on paper; however, it wouldn't be Edison who would transform Kinetoscope from an idea to a reality, the man in charge of the project would be one of Edison's most rusted workers, a Scottish man named William K.L. Dickson. The series of short films codenamed "Monkeyshines" were Dickson's first attempts to produce motion pictures.

The "Monkeyshines" films were three experimental movies shot in the Edison laboratories in order to test Kinetograph, a camera invented to shot the movies that would appear in the Kinetoscope. With the collaboration of William Heise (who would become a prolific director of Kinetoscope films), Dickson shot one of Edison's workers in front of the camera doing gestures and movements. As actual experiments of their work, this movies do not have a plot or a theme, and only consist of Edison's workers moving in front of the camera to see if their images were captured. Due to age and the poor quality of this early experiments, it is impossible to know who appears in each movie, although it is often considered that G. Sacco Albanese is the one appearing in "Monkeyshines, No. 1". (some say that it is actually John Ott, but the debate continues)

While it was never released to the public (Dickson's second movie, "Dickson Greeting" has the honor of being the first American movie to be shown), "Monkeyshines, No. 1" is indeed the very first movie shot in the United States, marking the birth of the Kinetoscope and the beginning of the age of cinema as entertainment. After this monumental invention, Dickson would dedicate his most of his work in improving his machine (including an attempt to add sound!) although he also started making the kind of short films the people wanted to see in what was now known as "The Peep Show machine". While not exactly real cinema, William K.L. Dickson's amazing invention would be another big step ahead in what would culminate in 1895, with the Lumière brothers' invention of the Cinématographe. 7/10

It's interesting from the point of view that it's 1889, it's an historical footage, but.... lets be honest, the europeans did even better in 1887 and 1888, with even better resolution and you can actually see what are the objects and what was going on.... but unfortunately this is not the case with this one. I'm sorry Edison but I stand with Le Prince. Yes, it was more than a century ago, but still compared to other works prior to this one, and the theory that Edison knew about what the europeans were doing, its.... I dont know, disappointing and disconcerting?

Still, it's an historical footage, so it's interesting.