They’re outside! Film history teaches about the Edison films and the Black Maria, and film history is right to do so. But soon, always, all over the place, film history is full of exceptions to the rules, or the rumours, or the usual run of things. Which is to say that here is a very early Edison film, shot outside.
This is a pretty amazing stunt: exquisite confidence and balance, inspiringly meaningless and dispensable. It’s going to take quite a while for film to eclipse this kind of theatrical, antical attraction. But the writing is just starting to appear on that wall.
The slow motion footage might be sort of accidental, but it works very well for this subject.