At first you could be forgiven for thinking you're watching a parade of naval officers marching past the camera in their spotless white uniforms but apparently what we are watching here is a parade of New York City's street cleaners circa 1903. Why street cleaners feel the need for a parade is open to question but this film doesn't really do them justice. In fact it is filmed with all the imagination of a CCTV camera's output, simply placed on the side of the road to record the men as they walk past. The men are then followed by a bunch of men without uniforms on horse-driven carts. This goes on for nearly four minutes, and you're left marvelling that, even at this modest running time, a film can manage to be so dull...
2 Reviews
the seamy side of New York
kekseksa30 November 2015
I have said it in other reviews but will not tire of saying it until I think perhaps maybe the message is getting through. There is no point in watching topicalities (films with an essentially 'newsreel" interest) unless you trouble yourself a little to understand the context in which they were made and bear in ind that most these topicality shorts were commonly part of a series of films.
It is true that a film such as this is not purely a topicality. Similar scenes could be taken at any time. Lumière cameraman Alexander Promio's 1896 film of Chicago policemen was, for instance, specifically staged for the camera (although the Chicago police parade later became a regular feature. The Whit Wings did however parade annually and had done so from their inception. But this film may also have been shot as a sort of quid pro quo for the shorter but more interesting film shot the previous day of some of these same "white wings" dumping the rubbish on the river-wharf.
US cinematographers in the period before the First World War were not all they might have been. Promio's 1896 film of the Chicago policemen is technically far, far better than this one. The Lumières were a firm that understood photography (Louis Lumière was himself a fine photographer), their cameramen were given some training and a system of quality-control was maintained. Great emphasis was placed not only on the subject matter but on the careful siting of the camera and on the mise en scène (to use a word not then yet in use)which, in the other reviewer's words were supposed to "do justice" to the scene filmed.
US cameramen at this period rarely had any such background. Edison's first cameraman, William Heise, was fairly hopeless. Blair Smith (the cameraman here) is not dazzling. Edwin Porter's only previous experience was as a projectionist and Billy Bitzer, at Biograph, was not frankly much better qualified. So the reviewer is quite right to be critical of these aspects of the film.
But try and give the man credit for what he has done. The series, shot by Blair Smith in April 1903, were intended to show the seamy side of New York and not just to repeat the more touristy views that were commonly shown. The films include a dumping wharf and a fish market as well as this "parade of sweepers". This is in itself an interesting and creditable exercise.
Not that the White Wings were without importance. They represented a very major political and environmental success for New York, set up following the 1895 election of Mayor Lafayette Strong who appointed one Colonel George E. Waring Jr.as Commissioner for Sanitation (Teddy Roosevelt was offered the job but declined). And Waring it was who cleaned up the New York streets so effectively that the New York Times could talk admiringly about how one could "see the epidermis of the asphalt". He also introduced a primitive system of waste sorting with into three different categories - ash, food waste and other rubbish.
As regards the operatives, Waring "found the street-cleaning force a rabble and left it an army". It was he who provided them with pith helmets and dressed them in white, much to the annoyance of their wives who had to clean the uniforms, which earned them their nickname. They first marched down Fifth Avenue in 1896 and the "Cleaning Parade" drew jeers that soon changed to cheers (this had also filmed by Edison (Parade of New York City Crossing Sweepers).
However they were scarcely a privileged group of men. The majority were Italian immigrants (many only coming to the US for the winter) and the department had a policy of employing foreigners to keep the wages as low as possible.
Once one understands the purpose and the context, one can then appreciate that, even if he is not doing anything very clever with his camera, Blair Smith has given some thought to his general set-up and come up with quite a witty idea that allows him to emphasise the relatively unusual nature of this group of films. Audiences were sued of course to seeing parades of policemen, firemen, army cadets and the like but this parade of street-sweepers and dust-carts (almost a parody of the more usual films) was likely to have taken them by surprise, an irony that could easily be pointed up in the commentary. Or is the reviewer not aware that such films would normally have been accompanied by a commentary and that, in one sense, what we are able to see now is never more just the visual half of the original presentation? This series of films is sometimes credited, in whole or in part, to Edwin Porter and it is conceivable that the two men worked together on it but I don't think there is any real evidence for it. They are known to have worked together the following month but on a rather more conventional panorama of Manhattan. This series seems more to have been a personal notion of Blair Smith's.
One further point about US cameramen that is worth bearing in mind is that their incapacities turned, ironically, to the advantage of US film. In all the talk about the importance of editing, it is often forgotten that the primary purpose of editing was remedial, that is to say, it was to make up for or sort out poor camera-work and poor mise en scène. In principle Lumière cameramen were not supposed to edit; they were supposed to get it right the first time. There is rather more editing from the outset in US films for the simple reasons that less care was taken with mise en scène and more editing was necessary. But this was a weakness that Griffith and Bitzer would later turn to advantage.
It is true that a film such as this is not purely a topicality. Similar scenes could be taken at any time. Lumière cameraman Alexander Promio's 1896 film of Chicago policemen was, for instance, specifically staged for the camera (although the Chicago police parade later became a regular feature. The Whit Wings did however parade annually and had done so from their inception. But this film may also have been shot as a sort of quid pro quo for the shorter but more interesting film shot the previous day of some of these same "white wings" dumping the rubbish on the river-wharf.
US cinematographers in the period before the First World War were not all they might have been. Promio's 1896 film of the Chicago policemen is technically far, far better than this one. The Lumières were a firm that understood photography (Louis Lumière was himself a fine photographer), their cameramen were given some training and a system of quality-control was maintained. Great emphasis was placed not only on the subject matter but on the careful siting of the camera and on the mise en scène (to use a word not then yet in use)which, in the other reviewer's words were supposed to "do justice" to the scene filmed.
US cameramen at this period rarely had any such background. Edison's first cameraman, William Heise, was fairly hopeless. Blair Smith (the cameraman here) is not dazzling. Edwin Porter's only previous experience was as a projectionist and Billy Bitzer, at Biograph, was not frankly much better qualified. So the reviewer is quite right to be critical of these aspects of the film.
But try and give the man credit for what he has done. The series, shot by Blair Smith in April 1903, were intended to show the seamy side of New York and not just to repeat the more touristy views that were commonly shown. The films include a dumping wharf and a fish market as well as this "parade of sweepers". This is in itself an interesting and creditable exercise.
Not that the White Wings were without importance. They represented a very major political and environmental success for New York, set up following the 1895 election of Mayor Lafayette Strong who appointed one Colonel George E. Waring Jr.as Commissioner for Sanitation (Teddy Roosevelt was offered the job but declined). And Waring it was who cleaned up the New York streets so effectively that the New York Times could talk admiringly about how one could "see the epidermis of the asphalt". He also introduced a primitive system of waste sorting with into three different categories - ash, food waste and other rubbish.
As regards the operatives, Waring "found the street-cleaning force a rabble and left it an army". It was he who provided them with pith helmets and dressed them in white, much to the annoyance of their wives who had to clean the uniforms, which earned them their nickname. They first marched down Fifth Avenue in 1896 and the "Cleaning Parade" drew jeers that soon changed to cheers (this had also filmed by Edison (Parade of New York City Crossing Sweepers).
However they were scarcely a privileged group of men. The majority were Italian immigrants (many only coming to the US for the winter) and the department had a policy of employing foreigners to keep the wages as low as possible.
Once one understands the purpose and the context, one can then appreciate that, even if he is not doing anything very clever with his camera, Blair Smith has given some thought to his general set-up and come up with quite a witty idea that allows him to emphasise the relatively unusual nature of this group of films. Audiences were sued of course to seeing parades of policemen, firemen, army cadets and the like but this parade of street-sweepers and dust-carts (almost a parody of the more usual films) was likely to have taken them by surprise, an irony that could easily be pointed up in the commentary. Or is the reviewer not aware that such films would normally have been accompanied by a commentary and that, in one sense, what we are able to see now is never more just the visual half of the original presentation? This series of films is sometimes credited, in whole or in part, to Edwin Porter and it is conceivable that the two men worked together on it but I don't think there is any real evidence for it. They are known to have worked together the following month but on a rather more conventional panorama of Manhattan. This series seems more to have been a personal notion of Blair Smith's.
One further point about US cameramen that is worth bearing in mind is that their incapacities turned, ironically, to the advantage of US film. In all the talk about the importance of editing, it is often forgotten that the primary purpose of editing was remedial, that is to say, it was to make up for or sort out poor camera-work and poor mise en scène. In principle Lumière cameramen were not supposed to edit; they were supposed to get it right the first time. There is rather more editing from the outset in US films for the simple reasons that less care was taken with mise en scène and more editing was necessary. But this was a weakness that Griffith and Bitzer would later turn to advantage.
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