There's a lot going on in this 30-second James White movie: so much, in fact, that it's unclear what the audience is supposed to be looking at. Is it the women sitting, going through the ears of corn laid in front of them? The fellow coming in from the lower right with the young girl in the wheelbarrow? The other young girl on the right, tormenting a horse? The folks coming in from the left with more corn?
It had been four years since basic form and composition had been so well demonstrated in movies by Dickson; it had been two years since the Lumieres had shown that competing lines of movement were quite accessible to the audience in their films. Yet here, White and his co-conspirator, Heisse, were still indulging in random, disruptive movement that makes hash of any attempt to figure out what is going on, where the audience is supposed to look, or why anyone should care. As for as I can tell, neither of them ever would.
It had been four years since basic form and composition had been so well demonstrated in movies by Dickson; it had been two years since the Lumieres had shown that competing lines of movement were quite accessible to the audience in their films. Yet here, White and his co-conspirator, Heisse, were still indulging in random, disruptive movement that makes hash of any attempt to figure out what is going on, where the audience is supposed to look, or why anyone should care. As for as I can tell, neither of them ever would.
