On YouTube, this says it's the first "Staged Narrative in a Film." I'm not completely sure if that wording is entirely correct - there is a staged bit of business here, but there is no beginning or middle or end, it's only a "Bit of Business" as they say in acting and directing lingo - but it is fascinating all the same. As it turns out, the first time that anything close to people "acting" (so it's not a train coming in to a station, or someone just walking or posing), it involves masculinity: Men being MEN in capital letters as they hammer one after another, and then pass around a bottle (or two of them do, or one of them does and then they repeat it with two of them), and then they continue hammering.
I know this was only an experiment at this time to see if *anything* could be shot and come out on film successfully and be developed and screened, but I do wish that if there was going to be a staged bit of business it could have gone... further somehow? Like had a conclusion or some other escalation that simply this (like what if the bottle fell out of one of their hands and shattered, or one of them hit too quickly and collided?) Ironically, this depiction by Dickerson and company was already dated, according to the IMDb trivia, as blacksmiths stopped drinking on the job by the 1890s. Even at the start, cinematic storytelling was full of inaccuracies and half-truths!
But seriously, this is cool that this has been saved for all of this time over a century (it was the first film entered in the National Film Registry in the US), and... these men certainly look the types to blacksmith the hell out of that anvil AND drink, so kudos on the casting!
I know this was only an experiment at this time to see if *anything* could be shot and come out on film successfully and be developed and screened, but I do wish that if there was going to be a staged bit of business it could have gone... further somehow? Like had a conclusion or some other escalation that simply this (like what if the bottle fell out of one of their hands and shattered, or one of them hit too quickly and collided?) Ironically, this depiction by Dickerson and company was already dated, according to the IMDb trivia, as blacksmiths stopped drinking on the job by the 1890s. Even at the start, cinematic storytelling was full of inaccuracies and half-truths!
But seriously, this is cool that this has been saved for all of this time over a century (it was the first film entered in the National Film Registry in the US), and... these men certainly look the types to blacksmith the hell out of that anvil AND drink, so kudos on the casting!