I do not always find myself in agreement with Mr. Lipton's reviews but on this occasion I think his remarks are entirely justified and, for that matter, demonstrable.
The other reviewer asks "where else" one can find such a scene. Well one can find almost exactly the same scene in Black Diamond Express (1896) in Black Diamond Express No 1 (1897), in New Black Diamond Express (1900) and in Lehigh Valley Black Diamond Express (1903), probably all but the last directed by James H. White. And then the 1896 film is not original but is a copy of a film made earlier the same year by the Mutoscope Company featuring the train The Empire Express which is a far better composition with the train approaching between two sets of workers and seemingly heading straight for the camera.
Edison had a very cosy relationship with the Lehigh Railroad (as did Mutscope with, an alliance based, as film historian Charles Musser points out, "on mutual interests" since rivals Mutoscope already had a similar link-up with the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad. Behind the railroad companies stood the hugely powerful coal companies for whom those railroads had originally been constructed.
These commercial associations (both companies also developed close links with the tourist-resorts) became increasingly important in US film-making but had a strong influence on the subject-matter of the films themselves. Films of trains do seem to have been genuinely popular (and the fact that this particular scene was so regularly remade would seem to confirm that) but it is very difficult to know whether audiences were truly getting what they wanted to see or were in fact simply getting what the film-companies and their commercial allies and backers wanted them to see. The companies themselves would often blame the general public for the low quality of their films but it is not always clear that the general public had much of a say in the matter.
We do not really do early film-makers justice if we fail to make critical judgements about their films or assume that their audiences did not do so. We end up repeating the same tired old clichés about how virtually every film is "good for 1897" (whatever that may mean) and about how people in 1897 were happy to watch anything moving on the screen (the "attractions" myth).
Neither of these things are true. In 1897, just as in 2007,good films were made and bad films were made and audiences in 1897 were just as critical of films as people are today. When they didn't have any other means of expressing their views, as Mr. Lipton rightly points out, they simply stayed away.
Charles Musser's excellent histories of this period show every clearly how Edison's own complete indifference to film-content brought him several times to the verge of disaster despite the enormous advantage he had initially had both from his early appreciation of the potential of film-technology and from his massive reputation as an inventor.
Despite his interest in that technology in a general terms, he had no interest in the process of film-making as such any more and no understanding of cinematography. There is therefore unsurprisingly no comparison in quality between the early films of the Lumière brothers (expert in photography) and the stuff turned out in the early years by Edison and his various employees. William Heise, who took the earliest films for Edison, was particularly hopeless and Mr. Lipton's comments about the composition here are entirely correct.
Demonstrably so, because, if one looks at the 1900 and 1903 versions of the scene, one can clearly see that White himself (and Edwin Porter making the 1903 version)spotted the waste of space to the right that Mr. Lipton talks because they conspicuously filled it in both those later versions with a whacking great sign telling the audience that it is the Lehigh Railroad as well as giving the whole film a generally more animated appearance. The increased "advertising" element is not perhaps the change an audience might have wished to see but it does, in a certain manner, improve the composition and it no doubt pleased Lehigh.
Mr. Lipton is however a little hard on White. Although the term was not yet in use, James White was more of a "director" than a cinematographer and did do a great deal to broaden the Edison repertoire and to take US cameras further afield than they had ever been. Although Musser (whose initial subject of research was Edwin Porter) rather plays down the role of White, it would seem that he remained broadly in charge of the filming of newsreel and location shooting until his retirement in 1903 while Porter became (from 1900 onwards) increasingly responsible for fiction-films shot in the studio.
It was essentially under White that Porter, who himself had only had experience as a projectionist, learned the rudiments of cinematography and it may well be the case that White had a degree of directorial responsibility for Porter's early docufiction films up to and including "The Life of an American Fireman" (in which White himself plays the role of the fire chief).
Edison had the luck of the devil and this was not the first time he was saved from himself by the talents of those he employed. White and Porter together did a great deal to turn things around and to improve the quality of the cinematography so that in later years the Edison company could boast of its "artistic" superiority to other US companies with at least a certain plausibility.
The other reviewer asks "where else" one can find such a scene. Well one can find almost exactly the same scene in Black Diamond Express (1896) in Black Diamond Express No 1 (1897), in New Black Diamond Express (1900) and in Lehigh Valley Black Diamond Express (1903), probably all but the last directed by James H. White. And then the 1896 film is not original but is a copy of a film made earlier the same year by the Mutoscope Company featuring the train The Empire Express which is a far better composition with the train approaching between two sets of workers and seemingly heading straight for the camera.
Edison had a very cosy relationship with the Lehigh Railroad (as did Mutscope with, an alliance based, as film historian Charles Musser points out, "on mutual interests" since rivals Mutoscope already had a similar link-up with the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad. Behind the railroad companies stood the hugely powerful coal companies for whom those railroads had originally been constructed.
These commercial associations (both companies also developed close links with the tourist-resorts) became increasingly important in US film-making but had a strong influence on the subject-matter of the films themselves. Films of trains do seem to have been genuinely popular (and the fact that this particular scene was so regularly remade would seem to confirm that) but it is very difficult to know whether audiences were truly getting what they wanted to see or were in fact simply getting what the film-companies and their commercial allies and backers wanted them to see. The companies themselves would often blame the general public for the low quality of their films but it is not always clear that the general public had much of a say in the matter.
We do not really do early film-makers justice if we fail to make critical judgements about their films or assume that their audiences did not do so. We end up repeating the same tired old clichés about how virtually every film is "good for 1897" (whatever that may mean) and about how people in 1897 were happy to watch anything moving on the screen (the "attractions" myth).
Neither of these things are true. In 1897, just as in 2007,good films were made and bad films were made and audiences in 1897 were just as critical of films as people are today. When they didn't have any other means of expressing their views, as Mr. Lipton rightly points out, they simply stayed away.
Charles Musser's excellent histories of this period show every clearly how Edison's own complete indifference to film-content brought him several times to the verge of disaster despite the enormous advantage he had initially had both from his early appreciation of the potential of film-technology and from his massive reputation as an inventor.
Despite his interest in that technology in a general terms, he had no interest in the process of film-making as such any more and no understanding of cinematography. There is therefore unsurprisingly no comparison in quality between the early films of the Lumière brothers (expert in photography) and the stuff turned out in the early years by Edison and his various employees. William Heise, who took the earliest films for Edison, was particularly hopeless and Mr. Lipton's comments about the composition here are entirely correct.
Demonstrably so, because, if one looks at the 1900 and 1903 versions of the scene, one can clearly see that White himself (and Edwin Porter making the 1903 version)spotted the waste of space to the right that Mr. Lipton talks because they conspicuously filled it in both those later versions with a whacking great sign telling the audience that it is the Lehigh Railroad as well as giving the whole film a generally more animated appearance. The increased "advertising" element is not perhaps the change an audience might have wished to see but it does, in a certain manner, improve the composition and it no doubt pleased Lehigh.
Mr. Lipton is however a little hard on White. Although the term was not yet in use, James White was more of a "director" than a cinematographer and did do a great deal to broaden the Edison repertoire and to take US cameras further afield than they had ever been. Although Musser (whose initial subject of research was Edwin Porter) rather plays down the role of White, it would seem that he remained broadly in charge of the filming of newsreel and location shooting until his retirement in 1903 while Porter became (from 1900 onwards) increasingly responsible for fiction-films shot in the studio.
It was essentially under White that Porter, who himself had only had experience as a projectionist, learned the rudiments of cinematography and it may well be the case that White had a degree of directorial responsibility for Porter's early docufiction films up to and including "The Life of an American Fireman" (in which White himself plays the role of the fire chief).
Edison had the luck of the devil and this was not the first time he was saved from himself by the talents of those he employed. White and Porter together did a great deal to turn things around and to improve the quality of the cinematography so that in later years the Edison company could boast of its "artistic" superiority to other US companies with at least a certain plausibility.
