Living Sculptures: Film Study for Screen Artist (1903)

Best movie ever!

A Disappointing Continuation

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

First of all, do not be fooled by the incorrect runtime here. This goes on for slightly over 4 minutes and the only thing I can think of that the "one minute" is referring to are the particular scenes that make up this short film. Oskar Messter's work here shows us a naked man and woman reenacting several scenes that are displayed through intertitles every time before we see the two. That is basically all there is to it. If there is any reason to watch it, then it's probably for people with a great interest in the history of films as depicting nudity must have been a very brave move over 110 minutes ago, not only for the filmmaker, but also for the two people in this video going naked full-frontal. It's silent, obviously, black-and-white as well. Not too bad for its time I guess.

It's first ever film contained nudity in history of cinema, not Après le bal by Melies (where woman was in flash colored clothes), not "The Birth of the Pearl" (1901)(same story). That's makes creators of this film very very brave, and revolutionary in some cases. Models men and woman is very good looking (which surprising if you see early "erotic films", where women always a little fat and a little ugly, and clothed by the way). You almost can imagine how ancient sculptor make Venus, looking on that woman. Film is made very professional, it's really justifies the title - Study film for artists. I don't know how artist can use it( you don't have player with home copy of film with pause button in 1903, you can only watch it in theater), so it's more for inspiration to artists. Very brave for it's time. 10\10

Nominally this four-and-a-half-minute film was intended for the art student who could not afford to hire a nude model. One could, I suppose, club together with others, rent this film and then do one's sculpture or drawing from this. On the other hand, this seems to have been saved at the Viennese archives, and they have a fine collection of early pornography. It could be used for that purpose also. Some scenes are simple, some are classical ("The Rape of the Sabines") and some are puzzling -- was there much demand for paintings of naked women bowling? Technically this is nicely done, with an early example of a circular tracking shot as if one were circling the subject. It survives in nice condition and can be viewed online at the Europa Film Archives site.