To my knowledge, these films from the English pioneers, today known as Brighton School are the best, most important of the first decade of cinema. Among them, Willamson is the best. You should check as many of his films as you can. These guys established so many grammar rules, which have since become so standard and hard-wired into our abilities to follow a story in film, that it's hard not to give them the credit they deserve.
Among these films, there is this gem. So much new, exciting and important is packed into just over a minute of film.
The plot is that a man, feeling observed by a camera, doesn't like it, moves towards the camera, and swallows the camera. The end.
It would be a fairly common theme and story, in this case under the genre of what was called a "trick film". But some amazing things are tried here:
-the character acknowledges the camera, talks to it, walks towards it, thus breaking the fourth wall;
-the camera itself (and the cameraman) become characters when the main character swallows them. We are told that the first shot is actually a film within, being registered by the camera and cameraman who then star in the second shot;
-the third and last shot is, as a consequence, ambiguous in that the camera is swallowed and gone along with the filmmaker, and although we get for the third frame the same set-up as the first (i would guess it's actually the same shot split into two in the editing), the storyline makes us assume we are no longer in a film within, but comfortably again behind the fourth wall.
-the "trick" is edited, through the edition we are swept into the whole tiny multi-layered thing.
So, we have a reflexive story, made clear by purely cinematic means (framing, editing). Take it when it was made. It's indifferent whether these guys were self-aware or not of what they were doing: what they made must be seen. This and other small films are like small pieces of grammar and words, which we could and would use to build the whole visual language that we all share today.
Among these films, there is this gem. So much new, exciting and important is packed into just over a minute of film.
The plot is that a man, feeling observed by a camera, doesn't like it, moves towards the camera, and swallows the camera. The end.
It would be a fairly common theme and story, in this case under the genre of what was called a "trick film". But some amazing things are tried here:
-the character acknowledges the camera, talks to it, walks towards it, thus breaking the fourth wall;
-the camera itself (and the cameraman) become characters when the main character swallows them. We are told that the first shot is actually a film within, being registered by the camera and cameraman who then star in the second shot;
-the third and last shot is, as a consequence, ambiguous in that the camera is swallowed and gone along with the filmmaker, and although we get for the third frame the same set-up as the first (i would guess it's actually the same shot split into two in the editing), the storyline makes us assume we are no longer in a film within, but comfortably again behind the fourth wall.
-the "trick" is edited, through the edition we are swept into the whole tiny multi-layered thing.
So, we have a reflexive story, made clear by purely cinematic means (framing, editing). Take it when it was made. It's indifferent whether these guys were self-aware or not of what they were doing: what they made must be seen. This and other small films are like small pieces of grammar and words, which we could and would use to build the whole visual language that we all share today.