User Reviews

Monkeyshines, No. 1, 2, and 3.

Shot in late, 1890, these are the first known films shot in the U. S. A. William Kennedy Laurie Dickson and William Heise, both working in the Edison Laboratory, shot these experimental films.

In 1888, Thomas Edison became interested in the motion picture, spurred the activity of a number of inventors in the U. S. and in Europe. Edison wanted to combine the motion picture with his previous invention, the phonograph. In this way, he would be able to capture both the sound and visuals of a live event like an opera and show it to a captive audience.

Initially, Edison thought he could capture pictures on a wax cylinder, in the same way he captured sounds on his phonograph. In early 1889, he assigned one of his employees, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, to begin working on the design. The cylinders did not work. It was impossible to reduce a picture to a pinpoints, the way sound was reduced.

Influenced by the work of European inventors including Etiennes-Jules Mary in France and William Friese-Greene, Edison was ultimately convinced to switch to a system that involved perforated film.

By the end of 1890, Dickson and his associate, William Heise, were able to shoot this experimental films. In these, a co-worker makes some broad movements. All that you can make out are just some kind of a weird shape moving. From these humble beginnings, a monolitihic industry would grow in a relatively short period of time.

This and the other "Monkeyshines" features are historically important as the remains of the Edison Company's earliest efforts to create moving pictures. The briefness of the footage of the "Monkeyshines" features hardly could reflect the many hours of intense work, thought, and trial-and-error sessions that must have gone on, but they do preserve a picture of where things were at.

The footage itself now looks weird and surreal, which was of course not at all the effect that Edison and his associates were striving for. The film actually shows one of the Edison Company workers simply goofing around for a few moments, making as many movements as possible, as the camera filmed him. The images are all indistinct, resembling specters or ghosts, and the footage has suffered many scratches and other damage over time, giving it a truly bizarre appearance that would be extremely difficult to duplicate intentionally.

Edison's original conception for moving pictures was an adaptation of his highly successful phonograph, that is, he planned to use a cylindrical approach rather than the projection format that we are familiar with. The distortion and blurring of the images reveal some of the inherent difficulties in the process, and eventually this would point them in the right direction.

In a way, it's appropriate that the record of these experiments now looks surreal and shadowy. Edison and the other pioneers of his era went through a shadowy phase in which the idea for lifelike moving pictures seemed so close, yet not quite attainable. It must have been a tantalizing and occasionally frustrating feeling for them to view the "Monkeyshines" movies and see what they had and had not yet achieved. For anyone today who is interested in the development of motion pictures, these early results can be an equally tantalizing look at the past.

Not much of anything, this "film" is a ghostly image of (probably) G. Sacco Albanese, a worker at the Edison Laboratories. It was shot by William Heise and W.K.L. Dickson, the co-inventor of the Kinetoscope, along with Thomas Edison.

The film is only a few seconds long, and it is hard to distinguish what, of anything, is going on. Of course, with being the first American motion picture, and one of the first ever, it has significant historical merit.

I rated it a 2 of out 10. Only its historical value gives it more than a 1.

Monkeyshines is believed to be the first film shot in the United States. First 4 movies are credited to French pioneer Louise Le Prince, and my opinion that all of Le Prince movies are better than that.

You cannot clearly see what is happening in this video.

It's only value it that this movie will be remembered as the first film shoted in America. And how I can see there is two more movies named Monkeyshines and I think this is first movie who have sequels.

You can find this movie on youtube/wikipedia.

In 1888, American inventor Thomas Alva Edison had an idea that would serve as the basis to what we now call "movies", that idea was the Kinetoscope and soon a new source of entertainment would be created by the wild imagination of Edison's team. According to history, Edison heard rumors about the invention of motion pictures (they were indeed invented in 1888 by Louis Le Prince in Leeds, England) and quickly his mind began to craft his very own devise to achieve the same effect. Edison figured out that the images had the illusion of movement because they were sequential images over a light source with a high-speed shutter, and soon put the conceptual idea on paper; however, it wouldn't be Edison who would transform Kinetoscope from an idea to a reality, the man in charge of the project would be one of Edison's most rusted workers, a Scottish man named William K.L. Dickson. The series of short films codenamed "Monkeyshines" were Dickson's first attempts to produce motion pictures.

The "Monkeyshines" films were three experimental movies shot in the Edison laboratories in order to test Kinetograph, a camera invented to shot the movies that would appear in the Kinetoscope. With the collaboration of William Heise (who would become a prolific director of Kinetoscope films), Dickson shot one of Edison's workers in front of the camera doing gestures and movements. As actual experiments of their work, this movies do not have a plot or a theme, and only consist of Edison's workers moving in front of the camera to see if their images were captured. Due to age and the poor quality of this early experiments, it is impossible to know who appears in each movie, although it is often considered that G. Sacco Albanese is the one appearing in "Monkeyshines, No. 1". (some say that it is actually John Ott, but the debate continues)

While it was never released to the public (Dickson's second movie, "Dickson Greeting" has the honor of being the first American movie to be shown), "Monkeyshines, No. 1" is indeed the very first movie shot in the United States, marking the birth of the Kinetoscope and the beginning of the age of cinema as entertainment. After this monumental invention, Dickson would dedicate his most of his work in improving his machine (including an attempt to add sound!) although he also started making the kind of short films the people wanted to see in what was now known as "The Peep Show machine". While not exactly real cinema, William K.L. Dickson's amazing invention would be another big step ahead in what would culminate in 1895, with the Lumière brothers' invention of the Cinématographe. 7/10

As much as it's certainly interesting to see history from 132 years ago, this is one of the weakest footages, as it's very hard to tell what's going on. Newark Athlete and the Blacksmith Scene make for far more interesting viewing experiences.

From Shadow Plays to the Phenakistoscope, to the phantasmagoria of the 18th Century 'Magic Lanterns' or the spinning slits of the Phenakistoscope invented by Joseph Plateau, and the simultaneous independent invention, in 1833, by the Austrian Simon Stampfer (Stroboscope). In 1867, the Zoetrope lantern astonished the world till Muybridge's Zoopraxiscope device of 1879. The Zoopraxiscope's photographic rudiments inspired legendary inventors to invent. Thomas Edison came up with the Kinetoscope and the designer W.K.L.Dixon (sometimes spelt as Dickson) worked for Edison in the USA and then in 1894 moved to England where he helped develop the Mutoscope machines. Thus, finally, we arrive at Dickson's 'The MonkeyShines'. Dickson is significantly a part of Film history because these film shorts were widely acclaimed as The first 'movie shows', or moving picture shows. However, The Lumiere brothers in France, Auguste and Louis, produced what is arguably the first real cinema show with the presentation of their Lumiere Cinematographe to a paying audience at the Grand Cafe in Paris on 28th December 1895. The only real brouhaha between these two landmark moments in history being the issue of pioneering and the attributing factors of being billed as the 'inventors' of modern film and cinema.

Monekyshines, No. 1 (1890)

Monkeyshines, No. 2 (1890)

These two films by Edison, as well as a third one I haven't seen, are believed to be the very first to be shot in the United States. None of the three were meant to be seen by the public as Edison was just trying to test the cylinder of the Kinetograph format. William K.L. Dickson and William Heise are created with trying this experiment in June of 1889 or the last week of November 1890, experts debate which date is correct. Needless to say, outside a historic level, there's nothing much here to see. A few images flicker in front of our eyes and on the whole I'd say No. 2 is better as we can actually see the figure. The first test is pretty brutal and hard to figure out exactly what you're looking at.

Monkeyshines No. 1 may not be the first film ever made (just as its financier, Thomas Edison, didn't really invent the movies). It is, however, one of the oldest surviving films and is believed to be the earliest film made in the United States. Indeed, Edison deserves tremendous amount of acclaim for his contributions to the art of film. Although Eadweard Muybridge and others may have pioneered what eventually became the motion picture camera, it was Edison's visionary desire to develop a device that could "do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear," and put it to commercial use, that led to the birth of films as we know them today. The Gay Nineties saw the emergence of this new art form and started to grasp at its limitless possibilities. Many of these early films are essentially short subject documentary films, dubbed "Actualities," that show snapshots of life during the final decade of the 19th century.

In 1890, film was going through its birth pangs. Edison and his team struggled to perfect a device that would create the illusion of life and movement from a series of still images. At this phase, the motion picture camera had not been invented yet. Edison's idea for projecting these images was to have a photographic filmstrip spiraling around a cylinder device (not unlike a phonograph), and the viewer would watch through a peephole kinetoscope. Monkeyshines No. 1 and No. 2 are early examples of films made using this process. At the time they were made, they were never intended for public exhibition; they were merely an internal test run of the system. Filmmakers William K.L. Dickson and William Heise shot these tests using lab worker G. Sacco Albanese as their subject. They were filmed outside Building 4 of the Edison Laboratory facility, which was used for performing iron-ore milling experiments.

These two films are impossible to review from a critical standpoint. They are not meant to be entertainment or art. They are, essentially, experiments in a new technological process. Both consist of Mr. Albanese doing little more than flail his arms, stretch, and move around for the benefit of the camera. The rudimentary technology that captured these images has not weathered the ravages of time very well, and Monkeyshines No. 1, in particular, has a very phantasmagorical effect as Albanese appears almost ghostly. Perhaps that is fitting, as these film remnants have allowed a ghostly image of him to live on over a century after the man himself passed away. Monkeyshines No. 2 is a little clearer in its presentation, but essentially more of the same. A casual viewer looking for even the tiniest shred of entertainment will walk away disappointed. However, the more intrepid film buff will likely find some interest, even if only academic, as part of a broader examination of both the origins of film and the Edison Company in particular. Either way, the story behind this early film is more interesting than the product itself, and one should approach it solely as a historical artifact.

I have endearing respect for all these early attempts at filmaking and yet they do not all possess the same amount of interest. With Monkeyshines (whether Nos. 1 or 2) I hardly know what it is I am looking at.

Being made in 1890, "Monkeyshines, No. 1" is the first true film ever created in the United States (or at least believed by many to be the first, just as "Roundhay Garden Scene" by Louis le Prince is believed to be the world's oldest celluloid film). In many ways, it's nothing particularly exciting when it comes to content. It did not, like "Men Boxing", begin any new film genre at the time; nor did it attempt to show a display of skill like "Newark Athlete". Instead, like all of the films in the Monkeyshines trilogy, it merely served as a test for the Kinetoscope camera that Edison was hoping to use in the future to publicize the motion picture. As such, it is no surprise that the result of this test is not a big achievement. More changes had to be made to the invention before it could capture true motion on film in the ways we are accustomed to.

Instead of a clear view of the action and definite motion like movies are today, the footage that makes up "Monkeyshines, No 1" is very difficult to decipher. The character seen to move before the lens is blurry, phantom-like and not at all detailed. Nor is the movement he performs very easy to watch. It is apparent the person was doing something with his arms. Waving? Gesticulating? From a horror buff's point of view, he looks more like some strange morphing being who can change shape at will. That's how hard it is to understand this experiment.

But there was hope. Edison obviously wasn't satisfied with the results of his invention yet, and needed to alter the Kinetoscope yet in order to change the look. The results of his later proceedings were the other two Monkeyshines films, 2 and 3. Number 2 already appeared much improved over number 1, and number 3 (which is either lost or unrestored) probably also showed some new details. Slowly, these camera tests continued to be made and improved upon until the great inventor finally debuted his invention in 1893, with "Horse Shoeing" and "Blacksmith Scene", which would publicize the motion picture industry for the first time in America.

(Note: It has been debated who the actor is. Some say John Ott, some say G. Sacco Albanese. Both were workers at Edison's factories).