New York License No. 65465

March 16, 2020 9:46 AM

"Watching this seven minutes and 45 seconds worth of old black & white footage is captivating. Stand-outs on the reel are the unloading of a ferry boat, pedestrians strolling near the Flatiron building, the activities of busy street corners, and two young men holding hands as they cross a bridge together. ¶ One subject, though, that has always caught our attention – as much due to their weaving in and out of Broadway traffic in Manhattan as to where they were headed – is an affluent-looking family being driven in an open touring sedan by a black chauffeur." Can We Identify These People? (1911) (The Brownstone Detectives)

The 1911 film previously.

posted by not_the_water (19 comments total)

I was kind of annoyed that they don't even mention the chauffeur after the intro, even to say the likely "it was always a longshot that the chauffeur lived with them and unfortunately we were not able to identify him". It just seemed odd to focus on him in the beginning and then not even say they couldn't identify him.
posted by tavella at 10:15 AM on March 16, 2020 [8 favorites]

Very interesting, but I find it annoying when people dub in sound effects to what is clearly something filmed in the silent era. Call me a snob.
posted by hwestiii at 10:26 AM on March 16, 2020 [8 favorites]

Very interesting research. I can’t help but imagine what year (surely also in the past) will have the distinction of being the last time we can’t know everything about the subjects in any given picture.
posted by klausman at 10:33 AM on March 16, 2020

The license listing indicates that the car is an E-M-F, a company that had only started building cars in 1909, and made around 50,000 cars (~27,000 in in 1911, second only to Ford) under its own name until Studebaker, which owned them, changed the name to Studebaker in 1912.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 10:46 AM on March 16, 2020 [1 favorite]

Did anybody else notice the guy hanging from the clock?
posted by Flashman at 11:16 AM on March 16, 2020

Has anyone made a list of the filming locations?
posted by Steakfrites at 11:54 AM on March 16, 2020

I guess it's OK to dox people after 109 years.
posted by Obscure Reference at 1:01 PM on March 16, 2020 [1 favorite]

Very interesting, but I find it annoying when people dub in sound effects to what is clearly something filmed in the silent era.

On the one hand, I agree with you. On the other hand, I find it very hard to stay engaged with silent video. It's weird but my mind wanders when just engaged on a single input for anything but a short length of time.
posted by amanda at 1:29 PM on March 16, 2020 [2 favorites]

Very interesting, but I find it annoying when people dub in sound effects to what is clearly something filmed in the silent era.

I get how it can be annoying but I think a lot of people could watch colour footage from the 70s with the same level of fake sound work as this and not give it a second thought.
posted by bonobothegreat at 1:33 PM on March 16, 2020

I can't stand the falsified ambient sound, which is as dreary as all that colorized war film that is supposed to make us better understand the experience because we're apparently now unable to comprehend monochrome images.

I find it better to just pair it with curiously appropriate modern music.
posted by sonascope at 2:25 PM on March 16, 2020 [2 favorites]

I'm baffled by these comments. I mean, y'all know you can very easily mute YouTube videos, so any annoyance you're experiencing is entirely self-inflicted.

Hence griping over it comes off as, "it bothers me that other people are able to enjoy this thing I don't enjoy."
posted by xigxag at 3:41 PM on March 16, 2020 [10 favorites]

Did not see the guy hanging from the clock. I loved the black and white, especially the area under the white umbrellas, with strong shadow and white effect. The chauffeur looked plenty happy and had rapport with some of the family members. It was not his taxi.
posted by Oyéah at 3:59 PM on March 16, 2020

Amazingly clear scan of the print; beautiful to watch.
posted by octothorpe at 5:46 PM on March 16, 2020 [1 favorite]

I am entranced by the fact that the look on the child/teenager in the front of the car at the very beginning is utterly familiar. Their face is EXACTLY the same look I get from my modern kid: "Oh God, save me from this family vacay'. The hand to the face, the slouch....the more things change....
posted by Northbysomewhatcrazy at 7:52 PM on March 16, 2020 [5 favorites]

I'm WALKIN heah
posted by not_on_display at 9:28 PM on March 16, 2020 [4 favorites]

That was transfixing. The corrected speed makes the people so much more real. It feels closer to looking in on an alternate universe where people dress differently and have different technology rather than viewing an old film of people from the past.
posted by Jess the Mess at 9:50 AM on March 17, 2020 [5 favorites]

So cool! Thanks for bringing this.
posted by Daddy-O at 11:05 AM on March 17, 2020

I find it annoying when people dub in sound effects

I just turn the sound off for stuff like this. If they need a soundtrack, I'd rather hear a narrator explaining things. They could stop and start and zoom it a hundred times to talk about all the stuff in the shot, they could talk about the smells and sounds (and give us audio examples as examples, not as bad dubbing), and I would watch every second of it. And then show the unedited version at the end.
posted by pracowity at 12:14 PM on March 17, 2020

Is there actually someone hanging from a clock, or is that just a joke about black and white movies and Harold Lloyd? If the former, what's the timestamp?
posted by tavella at 1:24 PM on March 17, 2020