Usually I don't do videos during the week but these knocked me out. Thanks to digital wizardry someone was able to restore and enhance early movies, and by early I mean 1896. It's amazing to see real people from two centuries ago. There are some elderly women and I'm thinking, I'm looking at someone who was alive in 1820.
So step into the Way-Back Machine (The WAY-Way-Back Machine) and see the world the way it was a mere 124 years ago.
There are a couple of similar ones available featuring New York and San Francisco. I like the colorized THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD.
ReplyDeleteI've only ever seen the La Ciotat footage in scratched, cranked up versions before. Seeing such a vivid copy of it is actually quite moving. Those people who have no idea that they're present at something quite... epochal, and that people would be watching them so... well, vividly almost a century after most of them had died.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'd never seen that moving walkway in the Paris films!
Who knew the Candle from Beauty And The Beast was so talented?
ReplyDeleteBeautiful, but the artificial addition of sound is unnecessary. Sync sound didn't exist at the time the footage was filmed, so it feels fake to have modern sound effects dubbed over it. Otherwise a magnificent job of restoration.
ReplyDeleteI've noticed the episodes of MASH being shown on MeTV are digitally sharpened. It doesn't look artificial, and you soon get used to it, but it's a little distracting at first.
ReplyDeletePlot is too slow. Dialogue bad.
ReplyDeleteNever make it.
These are amazing. I don't know if it's the digital sharpening, but the first video looks like video tape, after a few seconds.
ReplyDeleteAs to your comment on people from the 1820's, an odd fact: President John Tyler's grandsons are still alive (as of late last year.)
No one has yet explained why we don't wear hats any more. Everyone used to wear hats all the time. Sometime in the 40's or 50's something made people stop wearing hats. Come on Ken Burns, here is the subject of your next documentary: America Loses It's Head Gear.
ReplyDeleteJohn Tyler was President in 1841. Some of his grandchildren are alive today.
ReplyDeleteAn online search for a video "Berlin 1900 in colour!!!!" set to the music of Hans Zimmer's "Time", will also allow for a unique experience.
ReplyDeleteThe comments sections for these historic real life films, are usually the most thoughtful, fascination, moving comments for one to absorb.
(Well, usually. Unfortunately, trolls are everywhere. Do not feed the trolls.)
These are outstanding! It's almost like you can reach in through the screen and be there...remember the films with Walter Cronkite that we watched in school called "You Are There"? These kinda remind me of those. Regarding the sound...I really like it. It helps bring it to life. The attention paid to panning the horse 'clops' coming and then going by and the bicycle bells shows that they spent some time on it. Good stuff...thank you!
ReplyDeleteDid you notice that when people walked toward the camera, they didn't wave?
ReplyDeleteNext step is colorization. I've seen some colorized film from World War I, and the process is much more lifelike than whatever Ted Turner was doing to movies forty years ago. Even TBS doesn't show those now.
ReplyDeleteThat's because each frame was hand tinted back in those days.
DeleteThanks. Impressive and fun. Looks like they were shot at Fox in 2008. A Paris people mover. Who knew?
ReplyDeleteCome on Ken, say it. Say it!
ReplyDeleteCould be edited down by a few minutes....
None of these people filmed are with us today; chances are even the youngest child pictured made it to 2000.
ReplyDeleteIt's closer than you think. A couple of years ago the BBC published a piece on their website on a similart theme. The journalist who wrote it was middle-ish aged, in the Halfway-up-the-stair sense. He spoke of how in his early years in journalism he was sent out to interview an old woman, the sort of filler pieces that the press does all the time. Then she told him how when she was a little girl she had been introduced to an old man who was at the time a very well known war veteran. From the Napoleonic Wars and one of the last living survivors of the Battle of Waterloo. And when Katherine Johnson was growing up there would have been lots of people around for whom slavery was a part of their lived experience, rather than something from history books.
ReplyDeleteAnd in black and white
ReplyDeleteEwwwww!
Kind of mesmerizing. There's something peaceful about them. I didn't bother with sound, so that might be part of it; but I think it's somewhat the same quality as watching a nature video. Just people going about their business. Also the fascination of knowing people dressed just to go out and about their business. Its obvious that, while that life had its own stress, the world moved at a slower pace. Although now that I think about it, I'm old enough to remember a time when most men wore a jacket and tie outside of the home, and women did their hair and put on lipstick before so much as answering the front door.
ReplyDeleteIf I sound a bit wistful, well I am. But only for the luxury of TIME that such things imply. I was around for the bad as well as the good, so I know there's no such thing as the "good old days." You can't go back to just the good stuff; you'd have to live with the hard and ugly stuff too. But you have to admit that an era when a movie camera and a locomotive where the fasted-paced things around does have an appeal.
Thanks for sharing those, Ken.
Hey,
ReplyDeleteMore enhancements of old movies should be done.
One day our cool movies(eg. Star Wars, Pulp Fiction etc) will be old. Lets say in the year 4055, not 2020, we have enhance some movies then.
Thanks,
Telly
@ blinky
ReplyDeleteOne man, more than any other, is responsible for the end of American men wearing hats - John F. Kennedy.
Check film from 1958 and compare it with film from 1962.
I was impressed by how many women ran or moved quickly. We usually think of them moving along in a slow, dignified walk.
ReplyDeleteKen that enhanced Lumiere Brothers video is a bit overblown. For reference here is the unenhanced restored version of the same film: https://youtu.be/MT-70ni4Ddo
ReplyDeleteJust think what they could do with porn!
ReplyDeleteM.B.
Whomever created the video game Frogger, used this as a blueprint!
ReplyDeleteNo, this is the inspiration for Frogger:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnPiP9PkLAs
Saw 1917. They ripped off Lord of the Rings for a bit, loosening you up that this is a conventional film. There were some things that I expected to happen that didn't happen. There were some things that happened that I was not expecting(you know what I'm talking about).
ReplyDeleteDramatically this was very well done.
One thing that bugs me, perhaps I missed the details, but I think the wrong riverbank was swum towards.
Fascinating! It's strange to realize that the Eiffel Tower was only 11 years old in 1896.
ReplyDeleteIt's ironic, but old film (shot on actual film) like this that is remastered to digital 4K can look much better then 4K remasterings of older digital films. There is so much data recorded on actually film that there is more to work with then with less then 4K digital recordings. Check out George Michael's 4K remastered 'Last Christmas' video made in the 1980's that was shot on film, it looks better compared to anything from the same era that has been remastered to 4K from something that was originally recorded digitally.
ReplyDelete"It's strange to realize that the Eiffel Tower was only 11 years old in 1896"
ReplyDeleteIf you want some really weird archive footage, you can find on You Tube an old newsreel film from 1912 of as would be inventor named Franz Reichelt jumping to his death from the Eiffel Tower while attempting to demonstrate his homemade parachute. It ends rather gruesomely with bystanders diligently measuring the depth of the dent his body left on the ground.
What's that moving sidewalk in the second movie? In Paris I guess? Looks like the ones Isaac Asimov described in one of his Robots books, with the varying speed platforms. Amazing.
ReplyDeleteAlso, its funny how the Notre Dame video almost looks like a video composition shot, with the ground all blown out and the characters so dark. Looks like some of the wide shots in Titanic.
Thanks!
Excellent quality! The first thirty or so years of moving pictures is fascinating. The train film probably illicited screams of fear from audience members because they had never seen a motion picture before and thought the train was coming right at them (even though it was in black and white).
ReplyDeleteI discovered and became a fan of silent movies and their history in the seventies when I was in college. And I must admit I'm a purist. So the addition of the soundtrack was not my cup of tea. But I feel the same way about silents that were produced in the late twenties that included either sound effects or one or two words of dialogue to compete with the new talkies. But the clarity of the samples you posted is outstanding.
Awesome! Thank you
ReplyDelete