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example of the way in which the dissonances between human perception and camera vision have been the object of playful exploration in early films. He argues that the film "consciously exploits the reconciliation of these dissonances as a means of self-promotion". This is reinforced by the fact that the
Biograph brand is displayed on a sign shown in front of the screen before the film starts. Judith Mayne mentions the film as the first example of a new category of films where the storyteller is the photographer or image-maker, also stressing that the action takes place in the office of the Biograph company.
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for the most intimate and embarrassing aspects of the private sphere." He considers that it can be seen as including a "friendly" warning that if the use of camera became widespread, no one's privacy would be safe. He observes indeed that, as the film-in-film is not presented matted into the long shot of the proscenium, as was the case in e.g.
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Katherine
Manthorne considers this film as an example of the way in which early cinema, with the ubiquitous camera eye, "provided an invaluable source of carnal knowledge, one that was necessarily acquired through its lens." Paul Young mentions it as an example of the early cinema "voracious appetite
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Scene 1: Wide shot of the office of a film production company. The director shows an office boy how to use a movie camera. He goes out and a secretary enters. The director comes back and starts dictating a letter. The boy leaves and the director takes his secretary on his lap and starts kissing her
257:
process involving the filming of a scene by a camera visible on-screen and the later display of the film taken. Tom
Gunning mentions it as one of the earliest example of the camera playing an "essential role as the mute yet unassailable witness of a crime." Christian Quendler cites it as the first
273:
Noël Burch highlights two innovations introduced by this film in terms of cinematographic language. The first is the filming of a scene from two different angles, or "match with a change in axis". The second, less successful, is an attempt to show at the same time two scenes taking place at two
160:
An office boy at
Biograph learns how to operate a camera, and secretly films the boss kissing his secretary. Later, the boss and his wife go to the pictures, and see the kissing scene on the screen. The wife runs out of the theater. The wife replaces the secretary with a young man.
270:, spectators see the same film as the director. This alignment of the point of view of the audience with that of the director "implies that the viewer could be next - that anyone could be filmed in a compromising position and displayed before a jury of their spectatorial peers."
194:. It is only when the film was restored in the late 1950s that it turned out that the film was a comedy about infidelity betrayed by filming, and that Biograph in the title referred not to the company but to the filming device used by it.
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Scene 2: A cinema theatre. The director and his wife are sitting in a box at the foreground in front of a white screen. A sign is pushed before the screen reading "Ross and Fenton", followed by a sign with the brand
Biograph.
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Double exposure showing the same set as 1 and the house of the director. The wife of the director talks to her husband on the telephone while he is still holding his secretary on his lap and the young man is still
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Scene 3: Same set as 1. The director is dictating a letter to his secretary. His wife enters with a young man and forces her husband to fire the secretary and replace her by the man.
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different locations during a telephone call; this was done by superimposition, which made it difficult to distinguish anything. Future films will use split screen for that purpose.
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The scene filmed by the office boy during shots 1 to 3 is shown full-screen now seen from the back and as a medium close-up.
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Original features of this short film have been highlighted by various commentators, notably the use of a
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Same set as 4. The director's wife asks her husband for explanations, hits him and leaves furious.
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making film historians believe that it would be a documentary about early film production at the
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The film is composed of three scenes comprising seven shots filmed by a static camera:
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The Cinema Dreams Its Rivals: Media
Fantasy Films from Radio to the Internet
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without noticing that the young man has come back and is filming the scene.
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365:, 2012, Vol. 37, No. 2, Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH Co. KG, p.172.
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Tracing the
Individual Body: Photography, Detectives, and Early Cinema
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Filmmaking at the
American Mutoscope and Biograph Company 1900â1906
331:, Summer/Fall 1980, Vol. 37, No. 3/4, Library of Congress, p. 418.
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425:, University of California Press, 1990, pp.161 and 226.
348:, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, p.35.
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Autopsy and
Autography in the First Decades of Cinema
186:The film was initially catalogued under the title
412:, University of Minnesota Press, 2006, pp. 28-38.
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329:The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress
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363:AAA: Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik
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222:Same set as 1. Continuation of the action.
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843:Films directed by Wallace McCutcheon Sr.
729:Daniel Boone, or Pioneer Days in America
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346:Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life
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505:The Fastest Wrecking Crew in the World
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268:Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show
609:The Whole Dam Family and the Dam Dog
264:The Countryman and the Cinematograph
290:Review and link to watch the film:
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451:The Story the Biograph told (1904)
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864:
649:The Life of an American Policeman
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853:Surviving American silent films
393:John Sloan's MovingâPicture Eye
828:American black-and-white films
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188:The Story of the Biograph Told
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657:Police Chasing Scorching Auto
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848:Silent American comedy films
585:Panorama from Times Building
182:Preservation and restoration
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833:American silent short films
440:The Story the Biograph Told
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135:The story the Biograph Told
22:The Story the Biograph Told
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777:Old Isaacs, the Pawnbroker
665:The Night Before Christmas
553:The Widow and the Only Man
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142:is a 1904 American short
140:Caught by Moving Pictures
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753:The Sculptor's Nightmare
673:Dream of a Rarebit Fiend
681:Three American Beauties
601:Tom Tom the Piper's Son
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151:Wallace McCutcheon, Sr.
40:Wallace McCutcheon, Sr.
838:Biograph Company films
761:When Knights Were Bold
493:Wallace McCutcheon Sr.
376:Der primitive ErzÀhler
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633:The Miller's Daughter
423:Life to Those Shadows
391:Katherine Manthorne,
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823:1900s American films
625:The Watermelon Patch
357:Christian Quendler,
785:The Stolen Wireless
713:Kathleen Mavourneen
697:A Winter Straw Ride
537:The Escaped Lunatic
127:English intertitles
641:The Train Wreckers
491:Films directed by
293:"A cinema history"
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16:1904 American film
813:1904 comedy films
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737:The "Teddy" Bears
705:The Terrible Kids
569:The Chicken Thief
313:IMDb Plot Summary
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86:January 1904
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818:1904 short films
721:Getting Evidence
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250:mise en abyme
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296:. Retrieved
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176:Mabel Fenton
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149:directed by
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102:Running time
79:Release date
54:Mabel Fenton
298:26 December
147:comedy film
123:Silent film
36:Directed by
808:1904 films
802:Categories
521:Kit Carson
278:References
232:Screenshot
206:Screenshot
529:Boat Race
253:with the
119:Languages
106:3 minutes
63:A.E. Weed
545:Personal
219:filming.
198:Analysis
46:Starring
111:Country
90:1904-01
88: (
788:(1909)
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144:silent
395:, in
378:, in
361:, in
327:, in
445:IMDb
300:2020
165:Cast
156:Plot
125:with
454:at
443:at
344:in
266:or
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92:)
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