Directed by James Williamson
A man, objecting to being filmed, comes closer and closer to the camera lens until his mouth is all we see. Then he opens wide and swallows camera and cinematographer. He steps back, chews, and grins.
A Photographic Contortion
UK UK
i can’t believe james williamson invented vore
armie hammer’s ancestors
Such a bizarre short made in 1901, 6 years after the invention of the cinematograph by the Lumière brothers.
It lasts a minute but with that music at the background it seems even shorter. A 3D version of this piece would be even funnier.
It’s probably one of the first creepy movies ever released.
A man objects to having a camera in his face so eats and chews up the camera and cameraman.
A lot of fun, inventive in a way that feels way more modern than Melies trickery.
om, nom, nom
É evidente que o Cinema de Atrações, no geral, não estava tão preocupado com a encenação de seus filmes, mas no mostrar dos eventos que à frente da câmera aconteciam. Contudo, ainda assim, nesses pequenos filmes há de se perceber uma grande engenhosidade na lógica interna dos planos e, mais raramente (como é o caso de The Big Swallow) entre dois ou três planos. Ainda não temos grandes narrativas, mas os pequenos eventos mostrados são uma pérola para o cinema.
Not as messy as the follow-up, ‘The Big Spit’.
eat me daddy
One of the genres that I've read more about is called the trick movie. It usually relies on special effects but also relies, in general, on what might be considered more fantasy-esque qualities, like making the unbelievable believable.
While there might be more obvious examples of this, The Big Swallow is still a good example, in a more humorous way, of showing something that would've been thought of as being more than unbelievable even in the world of the movies.
Overall, it's a good short. It's pretty much a one joke movie, but it's still fun to see that one joke play out, all the same.
one painful truth is revealed in the first thirty seconds (a full half of the film, mind you): a “movie”, a succession of moving images, can be made with or without consent.* such is the case because films are inherently voyeuristic, intrusive — do we not delve into the lives of other characters, existing or otherwise, and get a picture (if not a full one) of the many events in their lives? even in a constructed narrative such as the one for The Big Swallow, we see a resistance to be filmed, a feeling of disturbance and discomfort at the notion that one’s everyday life can be watched by a crowd. one could say it’s only natural, as the earliest…
Wonderfully bizarre and a great idea that is very well implemented. The performance is gleeful and builds nicely to the titular climax. The climax itself is more ambitiously, and energetically, staged than you might expect.
Very cool piece of early film. This medium has promise.
Even beyond the "haha, this is vore" joke I could make, I think there is something neat here being done about a filmed character not only having the knowledge that they're being filmed, but that they are directly against the notion of being filmed. The gaze is fun for the viewer and what's being viewed until the illusion is directly addressed. The transition done here isn't as smooth as other ones that were executed from this era, yet the idea and the execution remains pretty sound. I too wish I could inhale cameramen that were annoying to me. Worth one watch.
6/10
