PRESERVED FILMS

Dog Factory (1904)
Production Co.: Edison Mfg. Co. Director/Photographer: Edwin S. Porter. Transfer Note: Copied at 16 frames per second from a 35mm print preserved by the Library of Congress. New Music: Martin Marks. Running Time: 4 minutes.

The more than three thousand films in the Library of Con­gress’s Paper Print Collection, made between 1894 and 1915, now provide the fullest surviving view of the origins of Amer­ican filmmaking. Their existence arose from a lucky quirk of copyright law and their preservation from early archival foresight.

Before 1912, U.S. copyright law made no provision for motion pictures, but for a fifty-cent fee one could copyright a still photograph. It was the Edison company, always vigilant in legal matters, that in 1894 hit upon the curious idea of copyrighting a “photograph” thirty-five millimeters wide and many feet long: rolls of photographic paper that documented its movies frame by frame. A few other companies, notably Biograph, followed Edison’s example over the next twenty years.

These legal records gathered dust in the Library of Congress basement until the late 1940s, when a former LC employee championed their value to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which began to fund experiments in copying the paper back onto film. Ex­amples convinced Congress to continue funding the project, which was completed in 16mm by the early 1960s. Thus, while most of the fragile and flammable films from the turn of the century were discarded or deteriorating, these prints on paper survived to become our key record of early American filmmaking—from short actualities through early multi-reel features. The unexpected result is that pre-1912 Amer­ican filmmaking survives more fully than that of the later teens.

The wonderfully surreal Dog Factory (filmed in Edison’s New York City studio on April 15, 1904) captures a theatrical vaudeville sketch of the sort that made up much narrative film in the first five years of the century. Its director, Edwin S. Porter, had made his landmark full-reel The Great Train Robbery a few months earlier, but shorter films like this were still more typical. Dog Factory is an elaboration on a popular “comic” sketch, which seems grim now, in which dogs were turned into sausages. On film the sketch appeared first in France with the Lumière brothers’ The Sausage Machine (1895) and was copied in Biograph’s Sausage Machine (1897) and Porter’s own Fun in a Butcher Shop (1901), to mention only those U.S. remakes that also survive as paper prints. In the clever elaboration of Dog Factory, it becomes evident that these “sausages” are in fact convenient storage devices for DOGS MADE WHILE YOU WAIT and DOGS MIXED TO ORDER (as the partly obscured signs at the top of the frame read). The two enterprising men—Germans, according to Edison’s catalog—first buy dogs from a tramp and then manufacture, with their patented “Dog Transformator,” appropriate breeds for a range of vaudeville types. —Scott Simmon

About the Music
Since I first saw it, this film has been one of my “pets,” and perhaps that is why, when casting about for an appropriate rag to play, I settled upon Scott Joplin’s “The Favorite” (1904). In nickel­odeons, a film such as this was sure to have been “ragged” by many pianists. Joplin’s jaunty piece works well because the principal tune carries an arresting turn of phrase that neatly matches the dog-into-sausage-and-vice-versa cranking. Again like a nickelodeon pianist, I couldn’t resist referring to various “doggie” songs—particularly “Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me a Bow-Wow” (Tabrar, 1892), now forgotten but still endearingly flippant. —Martin Marks

About the Preservation
Over the last few years, the Library of Con­gress has mounted a long-term project to rephotograph the paper prints in their original 35mm format. It’s a labor-intensive process in large part because the paper has no sprocket holes and thus each frame must be individually aligned. The new preservation copies are not merely an aesthetic enhancement; in films from this era before widespread close-ups, it becomes possible to see details long obscured. Especially for those who have seen the films only in 16mm, the new preservation copies are a revelation.

Further Information and Viewing
A descriptive catalog of the complete Paper Print Collec­tion is published as Early Motion Pictures: The Paper Print Collection in the Library of Congress, edited by Kemp Niver (Library of Congress, 1985). Many paper prints, including more than three hundred Edison films, are available for downloading or streaming from the Library of Congress’s website. Also featured on the NFPF website are Demolishing and Building Up the Star Theatre (1901) and Move On (1903).