Life of an American Fireman

Preeminent figure among early American filmmakers and one of the first to use techniques such as closeups and intercutting for narrative purposes. Porter was a projectionist, inventor and entrepreneur before starting work in 1900 for the Edison company, where he was soon promoted to head of film production. By 1901 he was making multi-shot films such as “The Execution of Czolgosz”, a drama about the execution of US President McKinley’s assassin which juxtaposed documentary footage of the prison with a staged dramatization of the execution itself.

Porter’s first major achievement was “The Life of an American Fireman” (1902), usually considered a landmark work thanks to its sophisticated editing techniques. The film cuts back and forth between the interior and exterior of a burning building in order to heighten dramatic effect, and is thus frequently cited as the first American use of editing in order to “drive” a narrative. (An alternative print of the film was recently discovered in which the exterior and interior scenes are juxtaposed as two continuous sequences, leading to speculation that the intercut version may have been a later development.)

Porter is probably best known for “The Great Train Robbery” (1903), a sophisticated, 12-minute narrative broken up into separate scenes and using camera movement and continuity editing to advance the story. His last important contribution to film was to give an unknown actor and playwright named David Wark Griffith his debut role in the 1907 production, “Rescued from an Eagle’s Nest”. Porter formed his own company, Rex Films, in 1911, but soon afterward went to work for Famous Players. There he directed several competent but unexceptional features as well as experimenting with various aspects of the filmic process. —TCM