Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze
- 1894
- 1m
IMDb RATING
5.4/10
2.3K
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A man (Thomas Edison's assistant) takes a pinch of snuff and sneezes. This is one of the earliest Thomas Edison films and was the second motion picture to be copyrighted in the United States... Read allA man (Thomas Edison's assistant) takes a pinch of snuff and sneezes. This is one of the earliest Thomas Edison films and was the second motion picture to be copyrighted in the United States.A man (Thomas Edison's assistant) takes a pinch of snuff and sneezes. This is one of the earliest Thomas Edison films and was the second motion picture to be copyrighted in the United States.
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This film might have been the greatest movie ever made but it is full of mysteries. I will quote some of the questions you should ask yourself while watching this movie numbering them.
1 - Is the sneeze real?
How do we know the sneeze is a real sneeze or a wonderful piece of acting by the great Ott? 2 - If the sneeze was real, what caused it?
As we know it, Ott might have been allergic to something waved in front of him by Edison himself. In this case we should feel sorry for Ott and what he went through to create this masterpiece.
3 - What does he say during the sneeze?
We don't know whether he made rude sound or a more polite sound.
4 - Did Edison even bother to say "Bless you"?
Because the sneeze is silent, I wonder did Edison at least say "Bless you" or not? Mysteries that will never have an answer. Bet you didn't think a sneeze hid so many mysteries.
1 - Is the sneeze real?
How do we know the sneeze is a real sneeze or a wonderful piece of acting by the great Ott? 2 - If the sneeze was real, what caused it?
As we know it, Ott might have been allergic to something waved in front of him by Edison himself. In this case we should feel sorry for Ott and what he went through to create this masterpiece.
3 - What does he say during the sneeze?
We don't know whether he made rude sound or a more polite sound.
4 - Did Edison even bother to say "Bless you"?
Because the sneeze is silent, I wonder did Edison at least say "Bless you" or not? Mysteries that will never have an answer. Bet you didn't think a sneeze hid so many mysteries.
I have seen this film numerous times in documentaries about the history of the silent film. I have always loved the history of the silent film and this is undoubtedly the seed from which some of the great comedies of our time have been based. I feel sneezing (nowadays) has become an overdone gimmick in comedies and this film started it even though I laughed at it. My final word on this film is this, IT BLEW ME AWAY!!! (HA HA)
Best known as Fred Ott's Sneeze, W.K.L. Dickson's short Kinetoscope should most likely be classified as some sort of documentary, although Mr. Ott's exaggerated wind-up and release come off as a little less than authentic. The novelty of moving images stunned and amazed those who saw these early subjects following their creation at Thomas Edison's famous Black Maria studio. And even though it is not the oldest film listed in the database, it was the first film to have a copyright filed on its behalf. Lasting only a few seconds, the movie itself holds a kind of rare and inexplicable fascination for lovers of film. Difficult to put into words (you could have watched the complete work a number of times in the span it takes to read this), I always feel like I am seeing the cinema's equvalent of Eve biting into the apple.
In this film, Fred Ott, an employee of Thomas Edison, takes a pinch of snuff and sneezes. It's not a particularly dramatic sneeze. In fact, if I hadn't known it was a film showing a man sneeze, I wouldn't have been sure what he was doing. It looked more like an artificially vigorous yawn after a nose scratch.
The film was made sometime in the first week of January, 1894, and was projected through Edison's Kinetoscope, a projector that only one viewer could use at a time by looking through a peephole at the top of the device. The film was actually not initially meant to be shown as a film to audiences. Rather, it was shot for publicity reasons, to generate a series of still photographs for a Harper's Weekly article. Edison and company, led by William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, had been gearing up for commercial production of films since late 1891. Fred Ott's Sneeze was an important promotional idea which was to help with this.
The film is significant for featuring the first medium close-up shot of a performer, now one of the most common types of shots used in film and television.
The film was made sometime in the first week of January, 1894, and was projected through Edison's Kinetoscope, a projector that only one viewer could use at a time by looking through a peephole at the top of the device. The film was actually not initially meant to be shown as a film to audiences. Rather, it was shot for publicity reasons, to generate a series of still photographs for a Harper's Weekly article. Edison and company, led by William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, had been gearing up for commercial production of films since late 1891. Fred Ott's Sneeze was an important promotional idea which was to help with this.
The film is significant for featuring the first medium close-up shot of a performer, now one of the most common types of shots used in film and television.
One story has it that, in 1877, railroad tycoon Leland Stanford and a pal were having drinks on Stanford's California stud farm, when one or the other of them wondered aloud whether or not a galloping horse ever had all four hooves off the ground.
Stanford directed his chief researcher to find out. In turn, the researcher hired Eadweard Muybridge (real name: Edward Muggeridge) a landscape photographer of note, to set up 24 cameras with trip wires along a track. A horse ran through the wires, tripping the shutters of the cameras, and the resulting photographs showed that, indeed, all four of the horses' hooves were off the ground for quite a while. When viewed rapidly in sequence, these photos were the precursor to "motion pictures".
What was needed of course, was film that moved through the camera, and several people created cameras and projectors (sometimes the same device) that did this, but all had various shortcomings.
Thomas Edison directed his employee, a Scotsman named W. K. L. Dickson (who would later go on to found Biograph Pictures), to study the inferior machines then in use, and come up with something better. He did, sort of, and he (under Edison's name) came up with the kinetograph (the camera), the kinetoscope (the projector) and the kinetophone (the projected film). None of these technologies were actually new, but Dickson's advances in each device resulted in a system that simply produced better looking presentations.
On April 14, 1894, at a theater on Broadway in New York City, several of Dickson's films were presented together, at an admission fee of 25 cents. The show included short films of a dancing bear, some Vaudeville pratfalls, and, . . . "Fred Ott's Sneeze", which became the very first copyrighted motion picture.
Stanford directed his chief researcher to find out. In turn, the researcher hired Eadweard Muybridge (real name: Edward Muggeridge) a landscape photographer of note, to set up 24 cameras with trip wires along a track. A horse ran through the wires, tripping the shutters of the cameras, and the resulting photographs showed that, indeed, all four of the horses' hooves were off the ground for quite a while. When viewed rapidly in sequence, these photos were the precursor to "motion pictures".
What was needed of course, was film that moved through the camera, and several people created cameras and projectors (sometimes the same device) that did this, but all had various shortcomings.
Thomas Edison directed his employee, a Scotsman named W. K. L. Dickson (who would later go on to found Biograph Pictures), to study the inferior machines then in use, and come up with something better. He did, sort of, and he (under Edison's name) came up with the kinetograph (the camera), the kinetoscope (the projector) and the kinetophone (the projected film). None of these technologies were actually new, but Dickson's advances in each device resulted in a system that simply produced better looking presentations.
On April 14, 1894, at a theater on Broadway in New York City, several of Dickson's films were presented together, at an admission fee of 25 cents. The show included short films of a dancing bear, some Vaudeville pratfalls, and, . . . "Fred Ott's Sneeze", which became the very first copyrighted motion picture.
Did you know
- TriviaFirst motion picture with a close-up.
- Alternate versionsAn additional 36 frames, almost half to the copyrighted paper print we see today, had been published in Harper's Weekly the year they were taken. This means the complete film, not the surviving copyrighted paper print, is nearly twice the length of the original copyrighted version. So surviving copies of the Harpers Weekly magazine technically contain an alternate version of "The Sneeze"
- ConnectionsEdited into Women Who Made the Movies (1992)
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze, January 7, 1894
- Filming locations
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime1 minute
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
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