Three women in pajamas dance for the camera. It's an energetic dance, and I was wondering if it would tire them out so much they would go to sleep afterwards. No, the film ended.
This record of some sort of music hall act is the only record we have of these unnamed performers, but the late date raises the question of the evolution of the cinema in my mind. Even as A.E. Weed was shooting this this for the peep show, Melies was producing super-spectacles that ran ten minutes, the editing in chase films was growing so involved that by the end of the year the comedy chase would be born, and over in England, George Smith had worked out the grammar of modern film.... and had dropped back into obscurity as a technical innovator and businessman. It would be half a dozen years before others began to build on his work. Even this short actuality would be subsumed in longer works: newsreels and movie journals and short documentaries about the vaudeville stage or dancing.
We often forget, looking back, that when the new, better way of doing things shows up, the whole world does not rush as one to adopt it. Sometimes it's too expensive. Sometimes people like the old way of doing things; and sometimes the people in charge don't get it.
Well, it's fun to watch these women dance, anyway.