Thursday 21 August 2014

The Big Swallow (1901)



Yet another quick lunch break blogging of a very early silent short, then, and this time we have a very early but of metatextualism, and you know how much I adore all things meta. 

This film is less than a minute long, but it manages to be playful and fun; the camera closes in on a bloke with a startlingly enormous collar (and the close-up, in 1901, was not in itself something to be taken for granted), until suddenly he swallows the camera and cameraman. We then see the camera and cameraman inside said bloke's mouth (!!!!) and then we see Big Collar Man again, laughing evilly. But, we're made to ask, who is filming these last two scenes...?

The grammar of film-making has never been so much fun. Have a look; it's on YouTube.

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