Electric Edwardians

Mitchell & Kenyon, a good place to start my blog.

I put a disc labeled Electric Edwardians into the dvd player this morning, knowing nothing about what it's going to be. My film-watching is far behind my film-collecting. I am working on it.

From the very first 1/24 second, it is obvious that it's one of those historically interesting and significant films. As a matter of fact it is a collection of films, all of which were made by Mitchell & Kenyon Production Company in early 20th century.

Quote Milestone:
The films of Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon were commissioned between 1900 and 1913 by routing showmen in the days before purpose-built cinemas.
advertised as "Local Films for Local People", they were screened at town halls, village fetes and local fairs.

Ancient documentaries like these usually appeal to film scholars and some film studies students only. There's no glamorous settings, no melodramatic stories, no special effects, no fast editing...no nothing but often just a stationary single shot of workers walking into a factory. Voila, straightforward as it is and maybe boring at the first sight. But give them a little time and patience, they'll grow on you. The Milestone dvd categorizes all the films into 4 chapters: Youth and Education, Workers, High Days and Holidays, and People and Places. I was first drawn to the beautiful image texture of "Whitesuntide Fair at Preston", and when it came to "Tram Ride Into Halifax", I was totally captivated by the scenery out of the tram window. The depth of the shot and the slow camera movement bring out all the beauty of those images and stories behind.

BFI channel on Youtube presents many, if not all, Mitchell & Kenyon films they preserved. They also do a good job by adding some short comments interpreting the significance and beauty of these films.
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Another movie I watched this morning is Le Doulos by Jean-Pierre Melville. A french gangster-cop story, as "le doulos" means informer in French. They story is quite hard to follow, to be frank. While I totally enjoyed the beautiful black-and-white image and the tempo of the movie, I am not sure I quite understood what happened.
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One final note on movie Naissance des Pieuvres, aka Water Lilies. It is a French movie about young girls, who are on a water ballet team, exploring their sexuality. One interesting moment is after the coach lady notices that one of the girls on the team hasn't shaved her legs yet before a competition, she asked her why. The girl answered she hasn't had time to do it, and the lady said: will you tell your husband that?