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Post by ZolotoyRetriever on Oct 20, 2019 6:34:55 GMT
This is a fascinating video of footage filmed from a cable car as it made its way up Market Street, downtown San Francisco, in April, 1906... just 4 days before the city was devastated by the big earthquake and subsequent fires. At the tail end of the video, there are a couple of shots of what Market street looked like just after the quake and fires: totally devastated.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Oct 20, 2019 15:24:52 GMT
I've seen this footage once before, a couple or so years back, and have only a few observations.
The first is of its remarkably clean condition. The second is an appreciation of the trouble taken to run it at its proper speed, and how important that is to rendering a "you are there" sense of real life. Nothing takes that quality away from films of the technology's first decades more readily than running at the wrong (usually too fast) speed. All the more remarkable considering the amount of sustained hand cranking required in making it.
The third is of the harrowing, chaotic nature of the Market St. traffic itself. Threading hither and yon between cable cars and streetcars are horsecarts, autos, cyclists and pedestrians, darting every which way with little apparent heed and often missing one another by the barest margins. The paces of life and transportation may have been slower, but they were more than made up for with near-anarchic disarray in the streets.
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Post by hi224 on Oct 20, 2019 19:17:55 GMT
wow.
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Post by mattgarth on Oct 20, 2019 19:29:28 GMT
Thanks for posting, Zolo -- oh, and ... Happy Birthday!
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Post by jervistetch on Oct 20, 2019 20:44:02 GMT
I think I saw Slenderman in that video.
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Post by mattgarth on Oct 20, 2019 20:48:54 GMT
Geez -- San Franciscans really knew how to dodge the traffic back then!
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Post by ZolotoyRetriever on Oct 20, 2019 22:08:42 GMT
Doghouse6: We're awfully lucky that at least this time capsule of pre-earthquake San Francisco survived. I wish there were more like it. It makes me wonder how many other great pieces of pre-earthquake film footage existed, but were either lost in the quake/fires, or, perhaps survived, but were eventually lost due to being on unstable cellulose nitrate film stock.
And yes, the traffic situation on that street is rather amusing to look at. It all seems like controlled chaos, like one big "dodge and dart ballet" played out in real time.
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Post by hi224 on Oct 20, 2019 22:13:31 GMT
Happy Birthday.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Oct 20, 2019 23:33:48 GMT
Doghouse6 : We're awfully lucky that at least this time capsule of pre-earthquake San Francisco survived. I wish there were more like it. It makes me wonder how many other great pieces of pre-earthquake film footage existed, but were either lost in the quake/fires, or, perhaps survived, but were eventually lost due to being on unstable cellulose nitrate film stock.
And yes, the traffic situation on that street is rather amusing to look at. It all seems like controlled chaos, like one big "dodge and dart ballet" played out in real time. Given the generally accepted figure of only 25% representing surviving films produced by major companies in the pre-sound era, we can reasonably guess that the rate is even lower for those made by smaller companies like that of the Miles Brothers, who shot this film. They were among the earliest distributors to establish operations in San Francisco, and in early 1906, built the city's first production facility right on Market Street (at 1139 between 8th and 7th, if anybody's interested, now across from the United Nations Plaza and the Orpheum Theater). This was only their second production, and the story around it is that brothers Harry and Joe were on the train east with the negative the day after the quake. Hearing the news en route, the film continued on to their New York office while they returned to San Francisco. Their studio didn't survive the fires, and temporary operations were set up in one of the brothers' homes as they began recording the aftermath and reconstruction. Plans to rebuild their studio never materialized. I always say that handling is the foremost enemy of film preservation. From a time when the industry was finding its way, and with enterprises from those backed by major theater circuits to fly-by-nighters operating, there's really no telling just how much obscure and long-forgotten footage may exist anywhere from foreign exchanges or libraries to residential basements and storage sheds, just waiting to be rediscovered and re-seen after languishing for more than a century. A classic good news/bad news scenario, but I always remain optimistic.
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Post by politicidal on Oct 21, 2019 1:01:35 GMT
For years, Brad Bird has been trying to make this old-school historical epic-disaster movie about San Fransisco politics and the earthquake tied together;think something like Titanic.
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Post by ZolotoyRetriever on Oct 21, 2019 2:01:15 GMT
For years, Brad Bird has been trying to make this old-school historical epic-disaster movie about San Fransisco politics and the earthquake tied together;think something like Titanic.
When the earthquake hit, the hotel suffered very minor physical or structural damage from the shaking. So far, so good... but later that afternoon, as fires engulfed other buildings, The Palace caught fire as well. By nightfall the hotel's cistern had run dry, and with no other water source available because the quake had destroyed the city's water mains, firefighting efforts were hopeless and the structure was soon reduced to a burned out shell.
The Titanic was lost for good, however, The Palace was torn down and, about 43 months later, there arose a new one in its former location - still there to this day.
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