Review of Mess Call

. . . ever put to film, in 1896, no less. Miguel and I were mezerized by this 34.48 second flick. We watched it something like six or seven times. It was made at some Army camp during the time the guys still wore those old calvary uniforms like in John Wayne movies for real. Bill and Jim, the directors, must have tolt these soldiers milling around the mess tent to act normal, NO MATTER WHAT DW Sr. Sr. did. So this short opens up with this guy who's a dead ringer for Denzel sipping from a cup of coffee. Though the camera seems to be on a stationary tripod, other guys are walking about in quite a crowd. But old Denzel manages to keep in almost every frame of the film, grabbing a hot dog along the way, executing a coupe de force about-face maneuver toward the conclusion which leaves him all alone centered in the exact foreground of the picture, which apparently is where he'd planned (or had been directed) to wind up all along. Unfortunately, there was no information available on the disk I watched which said how long it took for Jim and Bill to block this all out, or how many takes it took to accomplish this complicated choreography with the deft timing shown in this final product. But kudos to this bunch of guys for putting out the best comedy of 1896 (if not the entire 19th Century).