.Yl 1900 - 9

Recording of the dance Mesdemoiselles Lally and Juliette from the Olympia.

The title pretty much tells you all there is to know about this Edison film. It runs a very brief 27-seconds and shows a torpedo hitting its target and going off. I think the most fascinating thing about this is that we get a pretty close shot of the explosion and its aftermath. It was rather funny seeing this large explosion and especially seeing how long it took for everything that flew up in the air to land back down.

Footage from the dawn of film taken in Belle Époque-era Paris, France from 1896-1900.

Although we are led to believe that the ancient alchemists were all powerful, this picture somewhat reverses the order of things...

This scene is laid in the parlor of a New York tenement. Two watchers at the wake are smoking and drinking, while the widow is weeping over the coffin. The attention of the three is attracted for an instant, and the supposed corpse rises up, drinks all the beer in the pitcher which is standing on a table nearby, and lies down in the coffin again. The mourners return, and seeing that the beer is gone, engage in a controversy over it. During the scrap the corpse jumps out of the coffin and takes part in the melee.

The reception to the future King Edward VII upon his arrival to Edinburgh in 1899.

Woman dances the polka.

Two cooks fight, one pushing the other into a barrel and pouring a saucepan of liquid over his head. 10 second fragment available in flipbook format, otherwise lost.

A slightly risqué scene. In her bedroom, a young woman, standing on a rug in front of her bed, removes her corset. Smiling, she bares her shoulders and puts on her nightgown before letting her petticoat slide down. Then she picks up a daisy, plucks its petals, and gets under the covers.

Film produced by William K. Dickson’s British Mutoscope and Biograph Company.

Shot both on and from an elevated electric train.

In this picture some very remarkable effects are obtained by the reversal of the motion of the negative. A man comes home, somewhat under the influence of liquor, and starts to remove his outer clothes. As fast as he removes each article and throws it from him, it immediately flies back, and when he is completely bewildered by this weird proceeding, His Satanic Majesty suddenly appears, and the man collapses.

A very lifelike picture of the famous New York politician and Tammany Hall boss. This picture was taken on Sunday morning [sic] as he was leaving the 14th Street Wigwam, accompanied by a number of prominent New York politicians.

This very dramatic scene appears to come from the heart of the Boer War action, but on closer inspection it is clear that Joe Rosenthal staged this scene in South Africa with the help of a co-operative group of cavalry. Staged skirmishes like this were common at the time, with the bulky camera preventing more intimate acquaintance with the fighting.

A moving tour through lively turn-of-the-century Southampton.

A cleverly conceived picture of a little boy and girl with building blocks. The little girl has erected a pretty structure, which the boy proceeds to demolish with pokes of his fingers. When the demolition of the house is completed, the film is shown in reverse, and the little building comes back to its original form in a most marvellous manner.

An early short with a self-explanatory title.