Number of user reviews: 10
User score: 4.9
Newark Athlete is not an exciting film. A boy goes through a basic exercise routine for a few seconds, and that's it. I cannot even fill up this entry with production information this time, because it's the second consecutive William K. Dickson production from Edison's lab. What I could do instead, though is discuss Newark Athlete's role as a cultural time capsule that captures the 1890s fitness craze that was exploding in popularity at the time it was filmed. The bowling-pin-like objects in the Athlete's hands are Indian clubs, which were so popular and so widespread as exercise equipment that they became Olympic events in 1904 and 1932. Although the title may raise one's hopes that, like Sandow or Carmencita, it is a priceless preservation of a 19th-century celebrity in their prime years, this is not the case. The eponymous Athlete's identity remains unknown, and was probably an "athlete" only in the sense that he was a young person who was into the contemporary Indian club fad. The interest of the film, then, lies in capture of a particular pop-culture moment: it is the first film in this project that feels distinctly "of its time", in the sense that it depicts an event with cultural currency in a way that the capricious movements in earlier films (Monkeyshines, Roundhay Garden Scene, etc.) do not. Where Le Prince's films reflect nothing but the state of technology used to make them, Newark Athlete shows a socio-cultural moment.
And another thing. Despite the Athlete's fairly unimpressive routine (the 4.9 IMDB user score might be the lowest in this whole project), the fact that it is a routine opens up the possibility of yet another first for this project--that is to say, the idea of a performance. While I have referred to the people in previous films (Roundhay and the like) as "performers", those were, in truth, improvised motions more than anything else. The nature of those motions was irrelevant, subordinate to the technical goal of capturing any kind of movement, period. That is not to say that technical concerns are not a concern in Newark Athlete--it was never released to the public, and was created solely to test improvements in film technology since Monkeyshines--but there is a sense that the boy takes his role as athlete seriously, that he is attempting to inhabit a persona other than just "boy". (Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life seems a relevant text here.) So, while we have not reached the point where films tell stories, the Athlete's routine may nevertheless be considered a rudimentary script, and his role a rudimentary "character". If it feels weird that we're on Vol. 8 of this series and films still aren't even close to forming narratives yet, well, it'll keep feeling weird for several years hence. With Newark Athlete, as with the previous films in this series, the entire medium of film is an experiment, barely in the beginning of its infancy, and not in any way commercialized yet. The contemporary equivalent would be, oh, I don't know, quantum computing, perhaps?
Other connections: It's more Dickson/Edison, so everything from yesterday still applies, and since the boy's identity is lost to history, nothing new to say there, either.
Other most-voted films of 1891:
2. Dickson Greeting (William K. Dickson | 854 votes)
3. Men Boxing (William K. Dickson and William Heise | 541 votes)
4. La vague (Etienne Jules-Marey | 154 votes)
5. Je vous aime (Georges Demeny | 82 votes)
6. Duncan Smoking (William K. Dickon and William Heise | 56 votes)
7. Monkey and Another, Boxing (William K. Dickson and William Heise | 53 votes)
8. Two Fencers (Etienne Jules-Marey | 51 votes)
9. Duncan and Another, Blacksmith Shop (William K. Dickson and William Heise | 46 votes)
10. Duncan or Devinold with Muslin Cloud (William K. Dickson and William Heise | 43 votes)
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