Dickson Greeting
Reviewed by Edward Larsen Terkelsen

USA, NR, 3 s, 1891
Directed by William K.L. Dickson. Stars William K.L. Dickson.

Though Dickson Greeting wasn’t the first flicker show to be made in America (that mark of distinction should probably go to Monkey Shines, No. 1), it was the first to be exhibited publicly. Running just shy of three seconds (when projected at its proper speed of 30 fps), the clip is both fleeting and artless. (One can’t expect War and Peace to be told in the time that it takes for a cheetah to take down a gazelle.) In fact, its exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement can be distilled into one (very short) sentence: a man doffs his hat. Okay, you’d be better off using Freytag’s pyramid to deconstruct the dramatic arc of a Bazooka Joe comic, but I just can’t help myself from blowing spitwads at the pointy heads of those useless academics who fritter away untold hours composing long, mind-numbing treatises on this kind of stuff. Don’t misunderstand: there’s more going on in Dickson Greeting than, say, a television test pattern (it is, after all, trumpeting the arrival of a new frontier in entertainment), but its brevity (a mere 90 frames—perhaps less) thwarts even the most earnest attempt at analysis. Blink and you’ll miss it, which is why most current prints, like the one housed at the Library of Congress, loops the action several times.  

The wiry, mustachioed figure before the camera in Dickson Greeting is William K.L. Dickson, and while there’s no telling if he had the stuff to be another Charles Hawtrey, what endears him to cineastes is the work he did behind the camera. Dickson, a French-born photographer and inventor, had a hand in developing Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope. Unlike the cinématographe Lumière, the Kinetoscope was not a movie projector; it was a glorified peep box that could only accommodate one viewer at a time. Still, the celluloid format that Dickson devised for it, 35 mm, became a universal standard.   

Dickson Greeting debuted on May 20, 1891 at a women’s clubs of America conference hosted by the Wizard of Menlo Park’s very own old lady, Mina. As the attendants took turns peeking at the teensy-weensy emcee inside the nickel-a-play Kinetoscope, precious few could’ve known that they were present at the birth of what would grow into the forthcoming century’s supreme (and most profitable) art form. One observer enthused to the New York Sun, “It was a most marvelous picture… Every motion was prefect. There was not a hitch or jerk.” Indeed, Dickson Greeting is a far cry from the all but indistinct images in Dickson’s previous Monkeyshines series (of the three episodes, No. 1 is by far the most unintentionally abstract). The clarity of the fragment is striking, and the frames unspool as smoothly as aged whiskey sliding down your gullet. Dickson takes to the spotlight proudly, almost regally, and yet there’s something ironic about his expression as he passes his hat from one hand to the other. He’s outfitted like a barker, but his showy manner suggests magician extraordinaire Alexander Herrmann. Of course, the magic here has nothing to do with what Dickson is doing; it has everything to do with what the camera is doing. When I watch this, I can’t help but return the Dickster’s aloha. He and Edison are largely responsible for my grand obsession.  

September 15, 2011 

© Copyright 2011 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.