Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (1894) Directed by William K.L. Dickson

(Review originally written at 20 October 2007)

This film was purely made for publicity purposes, as a series of still photographs to accompany an article in Harper's weekly, so it wasn't even supposed to be even ever shown as a motion-picture in the first place. It must have been a real blast for Edison and Co. to make this movie and I'm sure it good a good laugh out of people at the time.

To me the sneeze itself really didn't seemed real, also because of the reason that of course in those days they couldn't shoot for several minutes straight, in order to wait for Fred Ott to finally sneeze. But who knows, maybe that really is how people sneezed over 100 years ago. It was a very highly sophisticated looking sneeze. A real gentleman's sneeze.

The movie isn't looking of the greatest quality but this is of course all due to the fact that this film was never meant to be shown as a motion-picture in the first place.

The film is historically interesting for a couple of reasons 1. It of course is the first ever recorded sneeze, as if that is really historically significant. 2. It was the first ever motion picture to be registered with the U.S. Copyright Office and 3. It's the first film to feature a close-up of a persons face. So without really knowing at the time, and without those intentions I would guess, this movie has become part of film-history.

8/10