Coronation of Queen Wilhelmina of Holland (No. 1) (1898) watch online HD

Ach, the obsession with "editing"! Editing is apparent in films from the very beginning and all early films (inc those by the Lumières) show signs of editing. What was not common was to have multiple shot films but, on the ther hand, films, particularly topicalities like this one, were designed to be watched as part of a progamme even if they could also be shown separately, so an assemblage of such films even if made later does actuallty represent much better what people saw at the time than does a single one-minute film shown out of context.

After the shooting of the first major topicalities in film history (the Coronation of Nikolaus II of Rusia), Promio was imediately dispatched to Russia to show the whole programme (about 30 minutes uncommented) to the Russian court. Neearly all the major films of Alexandre Promio were shown in such programmes (Promio in the US, Promio in Ireland) as well as being available separately. When one sees the great films of the Liverpool docks shown together, there is nothing "modern" about this; that was how a Paris audience at least was able to see them at the time. Remember too that film-programmes were usually accompanied by commentary.

Yes, they appear as separate items in catalogues because the producers did not yet have any control over distribution and could not be certain how the distributors would use the films and could not insist that they be shown in one particualar way. In any case it wasn't their business to isnist on any such thing.

But by 1900 certainly (but probably even earlier) it was not uncommon for the films to be issued edited end to end in this form (plenty of examples can be found of this in the Edison catalogues) as well as singly.

All the discussion of films as entirely separate one-minute units (combined with critical editomania) has in my view created a widespread misunderstanding of how early cinema functioned. The only reason for not making multiple shot films was that, given a one-minute unit, there was any real point in doing so. You made separate one-minute and then strung them together. The more we see films assembled as intended, the more we learn to appreciate the intentions of the original film-makers.

Editing was not some great discovery. It was always there (the examination of the earliest films by a team working on the subject has shown this clearly). Its purpose was essentially remedial so even the earliest US films are particularly heavy on editing, the Lumière films, more professionally shot, have much less. Editing was obviously also necessary for trick films and stop-motion goes back to 1895. As for multiple shots, they were not some great discovery either. They come in quite naturally as, little by little, the length of the films increase. The equation is simplicity itself. Whiel you keep films to one minute, multiple shots will be rare (espeically of course with the relatively cumbersome cameras - there rare only one or two examples in the whole of the Lumiere repertoire. Once you make films that last two minutes, you are going to start having multiple shots. Three minutes, more, Four minutes....need I go on? Once you have multiple shots, you are inevitably going to start seeing cross-cutting. One you have cross-cutting, you are bound to have occasional parallel editing (and the genuine article is much less common than people imagine). There is absolutely nothing more to it than that!

And whether that editing is a virtue (a great deal of editing remains remedial) depends entirely on the use to which it is put and the context in which it is used, not, as some editomaniacs seem to imagine, on its sheer quantity.

This a very good little film by Dickson who, after leaving Edison and American Mutoscope, ended up by being a rather good documentary cameraman.

After William Kennedy-Laurie Dickson left Edison and founded American Biograph & Mutoscope, he headed back to Europe where, in charge of the British branch, he shot many public figures and events. Among them are four shorts from Wilhelmina's coronation, which (I believe) the Dutch distributor assembled into a four-minute short and which has been posted on the Eye Institute's YouTube site. The scenes can be described as 1: carriages on the dockside; 2: carriages and cavalry on a boulevard; 3: Infantry in 16th century costume; 4: coronation.

It looks like an early example of editing, but it was almost certainly done much later, probably after the turn of the century. This can more properly be called a compilation than a movie. there is a single vertical pan in the last few seconds of the compilation, a remarkable feat with the bulky Biograph camera.