An 18-second reconstruction of a historical event hints at the violence and invisible special effects that would ultimately become integrated into the stories told on film.
USA
4.5*
Director:
Alfred Clark
Screenwriter:
Alfred Clark
Director of Photography:
William Heise
Running time: 18 seconds (0.3 minutes)
It is an indisputable fact that movies as we know them today, at least as we have known them for decades, projected to dozens, hundreds or even thousands of people watching and enjoying them as a film-going community, originate with the French Lumière brothers. But the great U.S. inventor Thomas Edison does have a claim on inventing one kind of moving picture. Thanks to his Kinetoscope, which he was inspired to develop by another giant of the early moving picture industry, Eadweard Muybridge (best known for his Horses in Motion images, a series of pictures that showed for the first time exactly how horses gallop), stories could now be told with life-like movements. Many of these glimpses of real-life movement that the Kinetoscope recorded pre-dated the Lumières’ Cinematograph.
One big difference between his films and those of the French brothers was that Edison’s productions were not projected onto a screen: They could only be watched by one person at a time through a peephole on top of a large machine. Another major difference is that these early Edison films were shot (and “projected”) at an astounding rate of around 40 frames per second, nearly twice as fast as films today (24 fps) and much faster than the Lumière films (16 fps).
But what they lacked for in technical wizardry, Edison’s directors made up for in creativity, and The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (also known as The Execution of Mary Stuart) is likely the first film to use the possibilities of the medium to produce a film that is not a mere recording of sights and sounds. It was recorded on 28 August 1895, after the production of some of the Lumière films but before they were screened in Paris exactly four months later. While it falls into the tradition of the “tableau”, a single unmoving frame in which all the players appear together and are nearly immobile, this special effects film uses editing to obscure an important replacement of an actor by a mannequin.
The film is not about a story but – like so many other films during the 1890s – about an event, namely the 1587 execution of the former queen of the Scots, Mary Stuart, following more than 18 years in captivity. The film does not provide any context, but to the viewer of 1895, when the film was produced, it must have been an unusual experience to peek into a Kinetoscope and see someone decapitated.
This 18-second film depicts a throng of soldiers bearing spears who have gathered around a masked executioner waiting next to the chopping block. In front of him, the berobed former queen (actually, in full Shakespearean style, played by a man, Robert Thomae) walks closer and kneels on the ground. The executioner picks up his axe and brings it down on the woman’s neck. A quick cut later, the head has been separated from the body and falls over the other side of the block. The executioner picks up the head and lifts it proudly into the air while the soldiers rush forwards to have a look for themselves.
The event has a melancholy but tense beginning, a violent middle and a triumphant, gory ending. The scene is brightly illuminated, and the focus is tight and narrow, although the soldiers standing around are something of a stand-in for the viewer and her own curiosity.
Director Alfred Clark, who was only 21 years old at the time and had replaced WK Dickson as the official photographer at Edison’s company after Dickson’s departure in April 1895, shows how even at the early stages of the film business, there was already a desire to elicit a visceral reaction from the viewer. In the case of this film, which hints at the subsequent evolution in editing and special effects, this desire compelled the director to get creative and produce one of the most interesting landmarks in early cinema.