A Film Canon

Edwin S. Porter's prolific output with the Edison Manufacturing Company can be divided into two rough categories, both of which engender their own kind of experimentation. On the one hand, his collection of fantastic films come closer to an avant-garde aesthetic than anything that I have seen to date, mainly by virtue of their attempts to translate abnormal psychological states into cinematic language, whether through discrete techniques, such as the panning superimpositions in The Dream Of A Rarebit Fiend (1907), or more general approaches, such as the willingness to shoot at night responsible for the surreal lightscapes of Pan-American Exposition By Night (1901) and Coney Island At Night (1905). At the same time, there is a realist strand of films that encompasses The Life Of An American Fireman (1903) and The Great Train Robbery (1904). Although the former represents an elegant narrative extrapolation of the newsreel and actuality traditions, the latter is Porter's masterpiece, drawing upon recent standardisations of the chase sequence to effect something more like ornamentation, while fleshing out the Western genre in the process. In particular, Porter transforms the chase from an event into a narrative logic, enabling a much greater diversity of action and location, a rudimentary attempt to provide the perpetrators with some interiority, and some impressive cross-editing - although, admittedly, this last feature isn't conflated with the very substance of the drama as it will be for Griffith. Just as Hepworth upstages the Lumiere Brothers, so Porter upstages Hepworth, concluding with the now iconic image of a criminal firing directly at the audience.