A Primitive Wink at the Primitive

As an adieu to the first module of the course on early cinema, below is a film by the American Edwin S. Porter called Uncle Josh the Moving Picture Show. You might remember Porter from such films as The Electrocution of an Elephant and The Great Train Robbery. Made in 1902, the film is a direct copy of a British film called The Countryman and the Cinematograph.

There is a lot going on in this film. We have the awareness and representation of:

• generic codes, of the types of films that were churned out for popular consumption;
• the idea of the primitive spectator fooled by the cinematographic illusion who instead of merely suspending his disbelief, accepts the illusion as reality;
• the direct impact cinema had on the sensorium and the body;
• the intense identifications between characters and spectators;
• increasingly sophisticated editing and optical practices;
• the price of investment - here, it's violence when one's fantasy is rudely revealed as fantasy.

The flagrant rip-off of another film also shows the ambiguous status of the cinematic object at this stage--itself a reproduction, created by many hands and a hazily-understood technological magic, what claims can it have as an original, singular work of art?