The Morning Alarm (1896) watch online HD

This Edison feature has some good footage of fire-fighters racing to the scene of a fire, and it is one of the better movies of what was then a popular genre. It also represents a resourceful idea on the part of the Edison Company, as part of a series of movies made in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in order to supply some locally-made features for a new theater.

The footage combines the sight of horse-drawn fire-fighting vehicles going past the camera with a good view of the snow-covered street and buildings of the December morning on which it was filmed. It still looks very good, and the scene is so well captured that you can see the breath of the horses as they hurry through the cold morning air.

The snowy setting is the main thing that distinguishes this from the numerous other 1890s features that also showed fire-fighters in action from a similar diagonal angle. The print looks just a little grainy, but even that could simply be blowing or falling snow.

"The Morning Alarm" might be easily confused with another Edison feature, "A Morning Alarm", which was filmed about a month earlier in Newark. This Harrisburg feature was filmed at the same time as Edison's "The First Sleigh Ride", which itself is a pleasant little movie. "The Morning Alarm" is still worth seeing, and it seems likely that it probably also achieved its original purpose rather well.

This Edison feature is of interest in that it films a popular subject of its time using a slightly different approach than most film-makers took with it. There are quite a few 1890s features like this that show fire-fighters at work, often as they hurried to the site of a fire, but most such movies used a viewpoint similar to the classic diagonal angle that the Lumières helped to popularize.

This one, instead, uses a different camera angle, trying to catch the vehicles as they come out of the station, then make a right-angle turn, and then come past the camera. It's a much harder task to pull off, and it actually doesn't work all that well here. You see much more of the anxious crowd than of the fire-fighting vehicles, and the vehicles actually move outside the camera field for part of the running time. The print as it survives is also pretty blurry, which doesn't help.

So this is most noteworthy as an example of an attempt to do something a little different, and even though as a movie it is not that good, it was certainly a worthwhile idea that remains worth seeing for that reason.

Another Edison feature, "Going to the Fire" was made the same day in the same city (Newark, New Jersey), and it works much better by using the more usual diagonal camera angle. The same is true of another Edison feature with a confusingly similar title, "The Morning Alarm", which was filmed in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The Harrisburg footage is distinctive and still looks pretty good. This one ("A" Morning Alarm) does not work as well, but it is distinctive in taking a different approach.

Maybe the best part of a century before BACKDRAFT but still a remarkable "moving picture" of the period. I don't know whether or not the original nitrate film still exits but I saw this particular "ultra short" during a local film festival of "early american film" some years back. The natural lighting that morning was used to great effect and I remember wondering what thoughts might have been going through the firemen's minds as they sped away that day.

. . . put out by the Edison people the same year (1896), A MORNING ALARM is much more intimate and urban than its similarly-named companion. Whereas the short featuring the definite article in its title apparently shows a convoy of at least 10 fire-fighting vehicles streaming past a residential apartment crowd of maybe 50 people perhaps midway in its run to the fire scene, this similar title (preceded by an indefinite article) portrays the fire unit as itz emerging from its downtown hive, so to speak. The first-shown vehicle is a ladder truck which seems to go on forever, a perception no doubt enhanced by the fact that each vehicle must make a sharp turn toward the fixed camera as it emerges from the station. Two wagons carrying FD brass buzz past the ladder wagon as it picks up speed, adding to the urgency of this scene. The personnel carrier brings up the rear. Perhaps of equal interest is the fact that this whole shebang is preceded by a running guy wearing a black top hat, and followed by a high-wheel bike rider with three young boys in tow.

. . . and I might add three bells more (since there are 10 fire vehicles altogether), but I do not want to make Edgar Allan roll over in his grave. However, it is hard not to hear those "brazen" bells from Poe's poem peeling away while watching this epic-length (for itz day) one minute, 5.10-seconds piece unfolding. From the tail end of the first-shown ladder wagon to a glimpse of the 10th vehicle in the procession (which consists of two ladder wagons, three steaming pumpers, and five personnel carriers) the wonderment of so much emergency equipment being dispatched toward one unlucky spot evokes the present day response to a 9-11 type event, or the latest mass shooting (though with fewer horses, of course). Meriting particular interest here is the BLOB-like ebb and flow of the large spectating crowd on the sidelines, which at one point threatens to ooze into the street, right under the oncoming hooves! Oh, the humanity!

Well this is not about the annoying sound of your alarm clock far too early every morning, but about a fire nearby and the firefighter force leaving their headquarter on horseback mostly in order to get to the scene as quickly as possible. That's pretty much all there is to this short film. People are standing on the side of the street. Quite a lot which makes me actually wonder if either this was not really early morning or they almost never have fires where this was made. In any case the watchers always step on the street and move back again when the next firefighter carriage approaches. Even at only 45 seconds I found it a bit repetitive and not too interesting and it's not among those silent documentary short films I'd recommend.

A Morning Alarm (1896)

Another interesting piece of history from Edison. This film shows a fire station at work as they get a call early in the morning and we see them heading out of the station. The difference in this film compared to countless others that showed the same thing is that this one here shows the station doors opening and the horse and carriages making a sharp turn and then heading towards the camera. When it comes to viewing these old films they're mainly going to appeal to history or film buffs who simply want to see what it was like back in these days. Sure, Hollywood could re-create something from 1896 but there's nothing like getting to see the real thing. The print of this film holds up very well and some of the images are so clear that you can clearly see the look on some's faces as the horses race past.