A Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire (1906)

Very disappointing...

Nice effects though.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

There is really no better way to summarize this little movie other than by what the title says: "A Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire". Of course you could add that it is San Francisco and that this film was made shortly before the disastrous earthquake hit the Californian city. This movie had its 110th anniversary already a couple weeks ago and as such it is obviously a black-and-white silent film. City documentaries were a thing back then and I find it somewhat funny how people sometimes stop and look at the camera. Other than that, it is pretty much what you would expect life to look like shortly before the outbreak of World War I. An okay movie from the documentary perspective, but really only worth checking out for silent film enthusiasts. The lack of a plot may bore everybody else.

Just a few days before a ruinous earthquake struck a great city, the Miles Brothers Film Company mounted a movie camera on a cable car that proceeded to travel along the center of a commercial and busy Market Street towards the Ferry Terminal Building (14 April 1906). The result is a twelve-minute documentary of visual delight. While many Western towns were slowly transforming from the days of cowboys (like gravel streets with wooden sidewalks), San Francisco had already made the change to a modern city. Some streets were paved, and there were the underground gas mains. Horses and wagons now share the road with the new automobiles, which weave in and out of slower moving traffic any way they can. Crossing the street was at one's own peril. Pedestrians cut in front of all kinds of moving traffic, and horses and wagons pull out in front of trolleys. It is amazing that there were no accidents on this film. This scene is before the days of traffic signals and police directing traffic at the main corners.Note that auto steering wheels are mounted on the right. Some trolley cars are electrified (they cross Market Street) while others are still being pulled by horses (along Market Street), as was the case in the previous century. Bicycles can be seen. Everyone wears hats (except young people towards the end of the film), and formal wear predominates.Some other observations:• Around 6:00 and again at the 7:45 mark, see individual pedestrians on the right side nearly struck by automobiles. • Just before the 7:00 mark, two automobiles nearly collide. • At 9:43, as a trolley approaches from the opposite side towards the viewer, auto on left (driving wrong way) veers to the right to avoid a crash with that trolley. • At 10:08, a woman enters the rear of a trolley from the middle of the street.All of this activity was followed by the earthquake and fire on 18 April 1906. See the companion piece to this film (San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, April 18, 1906). A sobering thought: One wonders just how many of those folks on camera would be dead within a few days, as Market Street and environs were hit hard. Three thousand of the city's population did die, about a quarter of a million were left homeless, and 28,000 buildings were destroyed.

The movie is twelve minutes long and it's made by the Miles Brothers, a pioneer film company that made some thirty movies between 1903 - 1907.This movie is their best known, and for good: it's a little gem. They installed their camera on a cable car that operated on Market Street, the Fifth Avenue of San Francisco (or their Champs Élysées, if you prefer). And so, set on the car, the camera filmed the view of the street, as they were slowly going down to the Ferry Building.Watching this movie is like traveling on a time capsule that brings us in a jiffy over hundred years ago. The impression is incredible, we fall under a charm. It is the Market Street in San Francisco, everything is there in place, something doesn't fit. There is much less traffic, but it's so chaotic! Cable cars coming from the other side, buggies, carts with their horses, some kind of trolley buses crossing the street every now and then, cars, bicycles, and above all pedestrians, circulating in all directions, crossing the street just in front of the vehicles, running in front of the street car having the camera and shaking their hands with a big smile, just to be caught in the movie, to remain on the screen for eternity. It's a formidable impression of chaos, of joy, of nice irresponsibility, it's La Belle Époque American style. Or rather it's the beginning of big urban life, that particular moment when people just enjoy the novelties: the big city, the industrialization, the cars, the filming. This moment can actually take a couple of years, then the reality becomes the king. But that moment is wonderful. It's a moment of enthusiasm, it is superbly caught by this movie. Watching it calls in mind the mastership of Dziga Vertov, The Man with a Camera. The movie of the Miles Brothers is a lesson of sociology.The movie was long considered to have been made in September 1905. Actually it was made in the spring of 2006, just days before the big earthquake and fire that hit San Francisco, and many of the enthusiast people appearing in the movie would die very soon after the filming.It happened that the movie was sent by train to New York in the night before the earthquake. The following day the studio of Miles Brothers was destroyed by the cataclysm.And the name this movie remained known as A Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire.

"A Trip Down Market Street" is an eleven-minute short film shot from a cable car as it journeys down Market Street, San Francisco. Shot days before the great earthquake of 1906, the film consists of a simple POV shot taken from the car as it journeys in a straight line, slowly prowling a city that bustles with activity.The street itself is expansive, packed with pedestrians, a few old fashioned automobiles, trucks, horses and buggies. With no apparent traffic lights, lane demarcations or highway codes, and with everyone dodging and weaving their way through the commotion, it's amazing that no accidents occur.Needless to say, watching the film today is like hopping into a time machine. The formal fashion, body language, architecture, hairstyles, beards, hats, clothes, storefronts and advertisements on display are all interesting. Eerily, the hundreds of men, women and children whom we observe with curiosity are themselves observing us with interest, for they have clearly never seen a movie camera before, which in their eyes must seem like an odd, alien thing.As the film was shot just days before the great quake and fire of 1906, an incident which nearly destroyed San Francisco, the film has a somewhat sad, haunting quality. Or rather, we imbue the film with a sense of loss.8/10 - Film archivists Rick Prelinger and David Kiehn are responsible for uncovering, investigating the origins of and restoring the film.