User Reviews

Three men in military uniforms dance one of those Russian dances in which they leap up from a crouching position in this very early movie from Max Skladanowsky.

This is not an inherently interesting movie, but the Russian dancers remind me of a Russian proverb: "The interesting thing about a waltzing bear is not how well it waltzes, but that it waltzes at all." The same thing can be said about a movie from 1895.

3 men dancing with such a vibe of freedom. That's the invention of cinema, how people are excited at that moment to see something new, an absolutely new art form, a complexed, integrated, organic way to convey humankind.

We see those "freedom" and "excitement" across the early cinema, and to be honest, it's imposing and mind-blowing.

"Another early system for taking and projecting films was invented by the Germans Max and Emil Skladanowsky. Their Bioscop held two strips of film, each 31/2 inches wide, running side by side; frames of each were projected alternately. The Skladanowsky brothers showed a fifteen-minute program at a large vaudeville theater in Berlin on November 1, 1895-nearly two months before the famous Lumière screening at the Grand Café. The Bioscope system was too cumbersome, however, and the Skladanowsky eventually adopted the standard 35 mm, single-strip film used by more influential inventors. The brothers toured Europe through 1987, but they did not establish a stable production company."

FILM HISTORY page 8.