100 Years at the Movies
100 Years at the Movies is a short film compiled by filmmaker Chuck Workman in time for the 1994 Academy Awards to celebrate a long history that began in 1894 when the first movie theater was opened on Broadway in New York City. The technology, by today’s standards was crude – in order to view the movie, a person had to look through a tiny hole as a strip of perforated film with sequential images was conveyed over a light source with a high-speed shutter. This device, the kinetoscope, provided a brand new way for Americans to enjoy themselves on a Saturday afternoon.
Throughout this short film, we see a host of clips from over two hundred films made between 1896 and 1993, with nearly no stone unturned. Charlie Chaplin bumbles his way through an auto race, a job waiting tables, an ocean liner cruise and a stay at a health farm. Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton perform death defying stunts. Al Jolson sings and plays the piano in The Jazz Singer, one of the first motion pictures with sound. We are spooked by monsters like King Kong and Frankenstein, caught up in the song-and-dance of The Wizard of Oz and 42nd Street, enthralled by the fight and flight scenes involving Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood and horrified by the city-hall-crumbling earthquake of San Francisco.
One thing that becomes most apparent when watching this short film is that because of the limited technology, special effects were indeed a challenge. Perhaps this is why within this montage, the first science fiction film shown is 2001: A Space Odyssey – indeed, by the time of that film’s release, mankind had just begun to explore outer space, and perhaps these forays informed the technology of the film industry enough so that directors could dispense with the fishing line that made the spacecrafts “fly” in the sci-fi B-movies of years before.
On a balance, even judging from the very short but equally iconic snippets of movies from when the medium was still brand new, many of the technological limitations caused the directors and the actors to work harder. Many of the industry’s big stars from the early days, like Lillian Gish and Buster Keaton, cut their teeth on the stage, and not surprisingly, this informed their efforts to make the collective cinematic audience suspend its disbelief – after all, during a live play, there are no retakes, and two key requirements for being a good actor are a steadfast dedication to one’s craft and tremendous discipline. Not only that, but since there was no sound, and therefore no spoken dialogue and therefore no discernable tone of voice, these actors had to maintain a fine line between acting and overacting in order to effectively convey the emotion of a particular scene.
Moreover, certain actors performed their own stunts, two such examples being Keaton, who had a two-story storefront fall on top of him in Steamboat Bill, Jr.; and Harold Lloyd, who actually did dangle from the face of a clock atop a twelve-story building in Safety Last. It is also worth noting that in a previous film, 1919’s Haunted Spooks, a mishap with a prop bomb cost Lloyd his right thumb and index finger, an injury he would disguise in his films (only so well) with a prosthetic glove.
As a beginner’s guide to the magic of film, 100 Years at the Movies works particularly well for many reasons. Not only does it document the evolution of the medium itself, it shows profound evidence as to why the films from way back when should be appreciated. And with so many unforgettable lines and scenes, without a doubt, someone unfamiliar with film would be compelled – no, possessed – to seek these classics out and watch them. That being said, however, the only question that comes to mind is: Why no Clint Eastwood?
James
