IMDb RATING
6.2/10
2.8K
YOUR RATING
Three men hammer on an anvil and pass a bottle of beer around.Three men hammer on an anvil and pass a bottle of beer around.Three men hammer on an anvil and pass a bottle of beer around.
- Director
- Stars
- Awards
- 1 win
Charles Kayser
- Blacksmith
- (uncredited)
- Director
- William K.L. Dickson(uncredited)
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe mixing of work and alcohol was commonplace in the early 19th century, especially amongst heavy laborers. By the 1890's, however, the practice had died away. The use of the bottle of beer in this film is intended to invoke a sense of comic nostalgia of a bygone era.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Edison: The Invention of the Movies (2005)
Featured review
Hammering entertainment into the twentieth century
'Blacksmith Scene (1893)' was one of the first commercially-exhibited motion pictures, filmed in April 1893 and first screened publicly at the Brooklyn Institute on May 9, 1893. The set-up is pretty simple: three blacksmiths (actually employees of Thomas Edison) start hammering away at a heated metal rod and an anvil, before pausing to pass around a bottle of beer. The acting from two of the performers is convincing enough; the third blacksmith, on the left, doesn't even pretend that the beer bottle contains any liquid, briefly pressing the rim to his mouth and then removing it without even the pretence of drinking. The film's first seven seconds have the silhouette of a fourth party blocking the left side of the frame, before somebody presumably told him to get out of the way. While watching this didn't give me the same thrill as the Lumière brothers' 'Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1895),' 'Blacksmith Scene' is still an important historical curiosity. I'm grateful that the National Film Registry always remembers to honour and preserve even these apparently-innocuous snippets of cinema history.
helpful•00
- ackstasis
- Jun 12, 2010
Details
- Runtime1 minute
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
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