Artivels Undescribable Perfection

SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

He_who_lurks This early Williamson film is, for its time, quite advanced as it displays a rather exciting drama (with some violence to boot!) and apparently uses 4 scenes. You don't see a lot of that in 1900 films! (The reason I say 'apparently' is because a fragment of Williamson's film survives. Actually two fragmented versions do: One shows the attack part while the other displays a fragment of each of the 4 scenes. The attack fragment is on Kino's "Movies Begin" set).I don't know much about the Boxer Rebellion, but it appears the film is about a missionary's home being attacked, but luckily some sailors (well, they looked like sailors!) come to rescue the home. There's shooting and bloodshed and several corpses lying around and for 1900 this one's quite sophisticated. Most films in 1900 were very dull and were only a minute; this short film originally ran 4 minutes, for its time that was long! If you want to see this one check out the version on YouTube, because that's the one that shows parts of all 4 scenes, so that one gives us an idea of how the original was.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) It was still a while until the beginning of World War I when this was made, but in film war already became a subject. This one here, which runs slightly over a minute depicts exactly what the title says. I cannot say watching this film gave me anything more than reading the title, but there are a couple factors that still make it a mediocre watch at least. First of all, not all movies had acting at this point. It's a plus that this one did. And also it has actually really many actors, which was probably not so easy to get them to do exactly what the filmmaker wanted. The filmmaker here is James Williamson, probably the very first Scottish director and also one of the most prolific easily, maybe the most prolific actually. It's maybe worth a watch for people who enjoy war movies to see what they looked like 115 years ago, but for the rest it#s really not worth a watch.

edalweber Some of the previous reviewers have perhaps read more into this simple film than was intended by the maker.I think that it was intended as a simple "action" film for entertainment rather than a comment on the Chinese.The Boxer Rebellion was recent news, and many lurid accounts had appeared in the newspapers.The Boxers had done things just like depicted in the film.The film was made in England,explaining the architecture of the house.However, Europeans living in China often built their homes in the style of their own countries,so this is not unrealistic for China of the period.Claire Lee Chennault,leader of the Flying Tigers,in his memoirs mentioned French villas looming up incongruously out of the countryside around Kunming.

bob the moo I watched this film on a DVD that was rammed with short films from the period. I didn't watch all of them as the main problem with these type of things that their value is more in their historical novelty value rather than entertainment. So to watch them you do need to be put in the correct context so that you can keep this in mind and not watch it with modern eyes. With the Primitives & Pioneers DVD collection though you get nothing to help you out, literally the films are played one after the other (the main menu option is "play all") for several hours. With this it is hard to understand their relevance and as an educational tool it falls down as it leaves the viewer to fend for themselves, which I'm sure is fine for some viewers but certainly not the majority. What it means is that the DVD saves you searching the web for the films individually by putting them all in one place – but that's about it.This film recreates a scene for the audience and I for one am willing to forgive it for clearly not being made anywhere other than England and certainly not China! That aside then I was looking for something that would be considered "epic" for 1900 but sadly this is not it. The pyrotechnics are something I supposed (well, smoke and powder) but it is all too stagy and stiff with nothing in the way of flow coming out in the edit. OK it was 1900 but I have seen films of the period do better than this with less.Interesting for what it is but there are more important and impressive films out there from the very same period.