User Reviews

This Edison feature is of interest in that it films a popular subject of its time using a slightly different approach than most film-makers took with it. There are quite a few 1890s features like this that show fire-fighters at work, often as they hurried to the site of a fire, but most such movies used a viewpoint similar to the classic diagonal angle that the Lumières helped to popularize.

This one, instead, uses a different camera angle, trying to catch the vehicles as they come out of the station, then make a right-angle turn, and then come past the camera. It's a much harder task to pull off, and it actually doesn't work all that well here. You see much more of the anxious crowd than of the fire-fighting vehicles, and the vehicles actually move outside the camera field for part of the running time. The print as it survives is also pretty blurry, which doesn't help.

So this is most noteworthy as an example of an attempt to do something a little different, and even though as a movie it is not that good, it was certainly a worthwhile idea that remains worth seeing for that reason.

Another Edison feature, "Going to the Fire" was made the same day in the same city (Newark, New Jersey), and it works much better by using the more usual diagonal camera angle. The same is true of another Edison feature with a confusingly similar title, "The Morning Alarm", which was filmed in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The Harrisburg footage is distinctive and still looks pretty good. This one ("A" Morning Alarm) does not work as well, but it is distinctive in taking a different approach.

This Edison feature has some good footage of fire-fighters racing to the scene of a fire, and it is one of the better movies of what was then a popular genre. It also represents a resourceful idea on the part of the Edison Company, as part of a series of movies made in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in order to supply some locally-made features for a new theater.

The footage combines the sight of horse-drawn fire-fighting vehicles going past the camera with a good view of the snow-covered street and buildings of the December morning on which it was filmed. It still looks very good, and the scene is so well captured that you can see the breath of the horses as they hurry through the cold morning air.

The snowy setting is the main thing that distinguishes this from the numerous other 1890s features that also showed fire-fighters in action from a similar diagonal angle. The print looks just a little grainy, but even that could simply be blowing or falling snow.

"The Morning Alarm" might be easily confused with another Edison feature, "A Morning Alarm", which was filmed about a month earlier in Newark. This Harrisburg feature was filmed at the same time as Edison's "The First Sleigh Ride", which itself is a pleasant little movie. "The Morning Alarm" is still worth seeing, and it seems likely that it probably also achieved its original purpose rather well.

Maybe the best part of a century before BACKDRAFT but still a remarkable "moving picture" of the period. I don't know whether or not the original nitrate film still exits but I saw this particular "ultra short" during a local film festival of "early american film" some years back. The natural lighting that morning was used to great effect and I remember wondering what thoughts might have been going through the firemen's minds as they sped away that day.

A Morning Alarm (1896)

Another interesting piece of history from Edison. This film shows a fire station at work as they get a call early in the morning and we see them heading out of the station. The difference in this film compared to countless others that showed the same thing is that this one here shows the station doors opening and the horse and carriages making a sharp turn and then heading towards the camera. When it comes to viewing these old films they're mainly going to appeal to history or film buffs who simply want to see what it was like back in these days. Sure, Hollywood could re-create something from 1896 but there's nothing like getting to see the real thing. The print of this film holds up very well and some of the images are so clear that you can clearly see the look on some's faces as the horses race past.