Luis Martinetti, a well-known contortionist born in Montreal (not Italy, as most people think), was actually only part of an act which he performed along with his two brothers of the Martinetti Brothers trapeze act, before he ended up leaving them to perform on his own. It was much later in the year 1894 by the time he finally came down to Edison's Black Maria studio in New Jersey to be filmed, in this single act shot by W. K. L. Dickson with William Heise and made on October 11 of that year. Reportedly, as no other footage of any sort also promoting the performance was made, these sixteen seconds appear to be the only motion picture record of Martinetti; in accordance with this, as there may not be any other footage shot on this date at all, this clip was no doubt made sometime after Martinetti decided to strike out on his own.
The brief excerpt the contortionist does of his performance seems to be one of the more complete acts they did on the various vaudeville performers and popular actors from 1894-1896. Instead of a bunch of tinsicas performed by Hadj Cheriff or a comedy act like Henry Welton's boxing cats and the Glenroy Brothers' boxing, (which are all very fragmentary) this short film really does give you a pretty good idea of what the act was like. It consists of a medium close view of Martinetti in a tiger-striped unitard suspended from a pair of rings, against the black background of the Black Maria, where he twists himself with an incredible limberness in such a way that most people would crack a rib (or two) to try. There was obviously plenty more to the actual act, but for a 16-second film it does give you a decent idea of what viewing the entire thing would be like. And was that not what Edison's original intent was for these Kinetoscope snippets all along? When viewed in that context it is thus more successful commercial-wise than some of the other acts Edison filmed that year.
Of course, the original intent obviously doesn't apply to the people of today in the way it used to work in the Kinetoscope parlors. Now, instead of watching the film to get a sneak-peek at the act, this brief piece of footage, like all the Kinetoscope films, actually serves more as a recorded document of what was popular during that period. It goes without saying that if Edison hadn't shot this clip, Martinetti would have vanished from the historical record a long time ago.