Caicedo (with Pole) (1894) Directed by William K.L. Dickson

(Review originally written at 29 March 2008)

This movie short can go down in history as the first ever Edison production to be filmed outdoors. It picked an interesting and nice subject of having a rope and slack wire walker doing a couple of tricks outdoors.

The rope and slack wire walker is Juan A. Caicedo. A Venezuelan who performed a couple of times in the United States, also in 1894, when this film got shot. He really shows that he was not just any ordinary rope and slack wire walker and he does lots of jumping and bouncing within this movie, without of course falling off, or every loosing his balance. He is not on an incredible height but the things he does do look pretty dangerous nonetheless. I for one certainly wouldn't want to attempt trying all that he does within this movie short. No wonder he got called the 'king of the wire'.

It seems pretty amazing to me that he actually managed to stay within the camera it's field. A real achieved once you see what kind of tricks he does. Sort of makes you wonder how many takes it took them to finally get the right and wanted result. You can also conclude from this that this movie was well staged and set up by its director, whoever that was. Most likely it was just William Heise, the camera operator who also performed the directing duties that this movie short required.

A nice to watch kinetographic experiment.

8/10