The Ghost Train (1903)

hyped garbage

A Masterpiece!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Ghost Train, The (1903) *** (out of 4)Special effects film with a train double exposed on the negative to give a ghosting image. I'm sure this was something special back in the day but it's pretty weak today.Down the Hudson (1903) *** 1/2 (out of 4)Technically terrific little film where the directors take a trip down the Hudson but use a higher frame rate to make the film seem almost like 3-D. If you get sea sick I'd guess this film will also make you sick because it does that great of a job of making you feel you're on a boat.Captain Nissen Going Through Whirlpool Rapids, Niagara Falls (1901)*** (out of 4)Made up story of a captain going down Niagara Falls just as the title says. An unknown director from Edison Studios made this and this too is a big leap over the normal for its ear. The camera races down the side of the falls getting some great shots.Westinghouse Works, Panoramic View St. Car Motor Room (1904) *** (out of four)G.W. Bitzer film takes place in a motor room where the camera glides through the air from the front to the back showing us everything that goes on. This is a very neat looking film from Bitzer who would go onto become the cinematographer for D.W. Griffith.

This short clip was created using two processes, film negative and double-exposure. The double-exposure is a little harder to see, it's the moon and the clouds to the upper left hand corner of the frame. The negative helps to give the train a surreal or ghostly form, and it's rather effective. Of course, to our modern eyes, it probably wouldn't work unless we weren't expecting it, as such techniques have become a rather standard form... not in mainstream narrative production, but still in things like music videos. Still, for the time, it is a neat experiment and ambiance and was probably an interesting curiosity for those who saw it and those involved.--PolarisDiB

This is a less than 1/2-minute-long film of a locomotive pulling four cars around a turn. Why a ghost train? I hope I am not a spoiler when I tell you that it was done by developing the film as a negative. When projected; everything that is ordinarily white becomes black, while those usually black are white.It was filmed by the Biograph company on January 5, 1901 and is worth a look just to see how technical innovation was beginning to creep into film production.