Here’s a movie that’s more significant for the repercussions it caused
than for its inherent fascinations.
On July 4, 1910, in the middle of downtown Reno, Nevada, two men
squared off for the heavyweight boxing championship of the world. One was
black, and one was white, and therein lay the problem.
The black man was Jack Johnson, first African-American heavyweight
champ. His unapologetic prowess and confident personal style upset racist whites
– a vast majority nationally at the time. His opponent, James Jeffries, was a
former champ brought back to battle Johnson by those who yearned for a “Great
White Hope” that would defeat Johnson. (This later became the title of Howard
Sackler’s Pulitzer-winning 1969 play on the same subject, which also brought actors
James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander fame.)
On a punishingly hot day (110 degrees), observed by 20,000 spectators,
Johnson ground Jeffries down until his side threw in the towel in the 15th
round.
The fact that a black man had beaten a white man in an athletic competition
was intolerable. Race riots broke out that night in more than 25 states and 50
cities. More than 20 were killed and hundreds were injured.
Meanwhile, the complete film record of the bout (nine cameramen were on
the job that day) was being rapidly copied and distributed for exhibition throughout
the country, as films of such contests were routinely done at the time (see “TheCorbett-Fitzsimmons Fight” entry here). Three days after the fight, calls to
ban the film began. Eventually, in 1912 Congress banned the interstate transportation
of fight films; the ban would remain in place until 1940.
Jeffries never fought professionally again. Johnson held his title
until 1915, and continued to fight until 1938, when he was 60. He continued to
suffer persecution, legal and otherwise, for the rest of his life.
The film still exists, now primarily as data for boxing scholars and
historians to assimilate. It remains a relic of the sad days when the idea of a
black person being the equal or better of a white person was enough to cause
panic in the streets.
The NFR
Project is an attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film
Registry, in chronological order. Next time: ‘White Fawn’s Devotion.’
The “trick” film has been around since Georges Melies built
his own camera in 1896. Special effects sell tickets. Here’s one that admirably
combines a handful of animation and filming techniques to create a madcap fancy
on film.
Vitagraph Studios was founded in 1897 by J. Stuart Blackton,
a former journalist and sketch artist, and Arthur E. Smith, a stage magician.
They soon found themselves attacked by Edison over patent violations, but
soldiered on and eventually worked out a settlement with the litigious
inventor.
“Princess Nicotine” takes its name from a popular 1893 stage
vehicle for the legendarily beautiful singer and actress Lillian Russell, but
little else. The film’s marching-cigarette stop-motion concept was attributed
to the earlier short animation “The Animated Matches” by French animation
pioneer Emile Cohl in 1908.
More recent research has revealed that Cohl stole the
conceit from English animator Arthur Melbourne Cooper, who made the first
stop-motion animation short in 1899, that pled for the donation of matches to
British troops fighting the First Boer War in South Africa (the government had
forgot to send some, you see).
Until it turned out that Cooper had in turn filched the
stop-motion concept from its true originators: Vitagraph’s Blackton and Smith.
1898’s “The Humpty Dumpty Circus,” featuring jointed dolls seemingly walking
under their own power, was the true first stop-motion film.
This illustrates vividly how imitative film was at the time.
It was a brand new medium, with no rules. People were making hundreds of films
a year, trying anything, seeing what took the public’s interest and responding
to that, or blithely going their own way. Repeating formulas, doing knockoffs
of others’ successes, things we think of as contemporary problems in the
commercial film industry, were present at the beginning. And we see similar patterns
of development with the many significant, pervasive mediums that characterized
the century.
The film is notable for the way it subordinates its effects
to its theme, if not a coherent plot. The previous “trick” film discussed here,
1906’s “Dream of Rarebit Fiend,” seems clunky in comparison.
Blackton and company craft a fun little romp, utilizing
double exposure, stop-motion, and mirror work (Blackton worked as a magician
also). Stage experience gave Blackton the sense of knowing what to play to –
and the sense to nail the camera down, the better to pull off the many
incorporated stage illusions that form part of the film’s charm. (The only cut-in
shots are there to make the particular effects work.) It’s a hybrid – a
theatrical form now embedded in something a bit more interdimensional.
In the film, a gentleman nods off while loading his pipe.
Two tiny fairies pop out of a cigar box and play tricks on him. There are oversized
props – hay serves as tobacco – and the man traps the fairies in the box. Out
of it he pulls a rose that blows smoke at him – his peer through a magnifying
glass at it reveals a rose/girl hybrid puffing away gaily on a cigarette
European-style, with the third and fourth fingers.
We cut back to the wide shot of the room; for some reason,
the richly appointed drapes and furnishings that were there for the first two
minutes vanish for the rest of the film. The matches, cigarettes, and smoking
implements dance. (Anyone who remembers the smoking culture of the 20th
century knows that it was largely a male ritual, complete with tools such as
cigar cutters, Zippos, cans of loamy pipe tobacco, papers and bags of Drum or
Bugler for roll-your-owners, cleaners and scrapers, the ubiquitous pipe
cleaners, etc.)
The most transcendent moments belong to a rose that takes
center stage via stop-motion, then de-petals itself and swirls dreamily into
the shape of a dancing, circling wreath that transmogrifies and condenses into
a dancing cigar. The man returns, lights up, finds one of the tiny fairies
trapped in a bottle, smashes it. She flashes him coyly. He blows smoke at her,
she sets fire to the table top, he washes her away with a squirt of seltzer
water (could this be the earliest use in film of this ancient gag?), and manically
ends up squirting himself in the face as well.
It is often alleged that the film served in part as product
placement for Sweet Caporals, a popular cigarette brand of the day; however, a
frame examination of brand names on the boxes don’t seem to correlate with any
known at the time. If this were a true purpose, that would make this the very
first example of the integrated commercial.
The NFR
Project is an attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film
Registry, in chronological order. Next time: ‘Jeffries-Johnson World’s
Championship Boxing Contest.’
I'm betting on Morgan Freeman's hair for the win, Dick.
I have always been a fan of big, cheesy films, none more
than Biblical ones. Part of it was the time I grew up in – the days of “The Ten
Commandments” and “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” Well, here comes the reboot
of a classic – a new adaptation of Lew Wallace’s “Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ,”
written in 1880.
There have been six movie versions of the book including this
new one, the most memorable being the 1959 William Wyler-directed monster
starring Charlton Heston. This time, the director is Timur Bekmambetov, famous
for his pair of dark-fantasy Russian epics “Night Watch” and “Day Watch.” The
star is Jack Huston, grandson of director John.
Supposedly, Jesus figures big in this one. Way big. Producer
Mark Burnett and friends, known for many Christian-oriented film and TV projects,
are helming this one, and it seems we are going to get a blockbuster for
Christ. In an interview, the director talks about this version being much more about
forgiveness than revenge, but I couldn’t really see any forgiveness in the trailer,
due to the massive amount of intervening REVENGE.
Here are some of the impressions I got from a look at the
trailer:
1.We are in CGI Heaven. We see a battle scene, and
not one element of it is real.
2.Sweaty bodies. Always OK in a Bible movie, if it
indicates suffering.
3.Were the ancient Romans in the habit of using
people they didn’t like as hood ornaments for their battering rams?
4.Oh, no. POV CGI.
5.Ben-Hur is adrift, floating on a mast after the
battle. And the mast is in what shape? Johnny? That’s right. A cross. I guess
you would call it a Christ-mast.
6.Morgan Freeman in the Hugh Griffith role! Wow. I
dig his dreads, and of course he gets all the sonorous exposition in the film Good
call.
7.Looks like there’s even a wit bit o’ sex.
8.And lots more Jesus!
9.And vengeance. Let’s face it, the most memorable
scene in “Ben-Hur” is not everything working out at the end thanks to
you-know-you (hint: rhymes with mee-sis) – it’s when one guy’s trying to kill
another with a buckboard while they’re racing plimmety-bimmety around a big
track, 27 horses flyin’ this way and that, fans getting horse snot and wore all
over ‘em!
The new “Ben-Hur” will, I predict, be as deliciously awful
as the recent “Noah” and “Exodus,” both of which I went to voluntarily and paid
my own money to get into. I will do the same here. It’s the same ridiculous,
hypocritical dynamic that drives all religious epics.
To make your money back, you have to show the vengeance. You
have to get some sex in there, and the sinning – making sure to condemn by
examining it in luxurious detail, the better to commit them to memory for
future reference. It’s OK as long as the bad guys get it in the end – as graphically
as possible, of course. Violence is fine as long as it metes out what is
usually interpreted as God’s punishment and slakes the thirst for revenge.
Then, as in the book, after revenge is taken, the
forgiveness can begin (and the vengeful Jew turns into the loving Christian, which
ends up being the point of all this). The dialogue already sounds awful – a great, random mash-up of contemporary colloquialisms and pretentious pseudo-Scripture. Messala actually says during the chariot race, “Are we having fun yet, brother?”
I can hardly wait!
