Sunday glimmers - Surprises

You may have heard the word "glimmer" before. Glimmers in psychology are the opposite of triggers, small moments of peace or joy sparking positive feelings. Those can be completely simple things that you might not even notice consciously, but noticing and appreciating them can help your mental health.

This week was my birthday.
You may remember my post the other day in which I vented about the piece I had wanted to make for myself as a special gift (saying it was a gift was my motivation to finally get on it) which went completely wrong. While having a very vague idea how I could not save the piece the way I imagined it, but try a different approach, that obviously didn't work out in time.

Then a surprise parcel arrived a few days early. I was completely clueless when I opened it, I had never heard of the shop and wondered what was going on.
The parcel contained a cat figurine, but no card, no nothing.
Could this be a mistake? No because the next day I got an email.
I met M. on Plurk (a social networking and microblogging service) many years ago. We live in different countries and have never met in person, but we never lost contact which I'm very happy about.
The email's title was "A feline spirit to celebrate 60" and I'd like to share these lines with you because I think they are absolutely wonderful:
"There are prettier cats, funnier ones, those with more history, and probably ones that better suit your style or your home. But what I like about this one is that it's precisely an anonymous cat - not representing a specific one but capable of representing them all: past cats, present cats, and future ones. It's like a spirit, a totem of cats, saying: "this home makes cats happy.""
Isn't that perfect?
And please ignore the voice from the background saying he would be even happier if he got more snacks.

On the birthday itself, I put the recycling bag into the hallway to take it down later and found a pretty box with a gift from my neighbors. What a nice surprise at 5 in the morning!

For that day, I expected a cat food parcel and thanks to an email from the postal service obviously also one from the drugstore which puzzled me as I hadn't ordered anything from there.
Quite early in the morning the bell rang which completely confused me because it was way too early for the mailman ... and had she said "flowers" through the intercom?
Flowers indeed, sent a by a good friend! Look at that!

The next surprise came in form of my sister who brought me something from the oldest café in town. I didn't think of taking a picture there, sorry. All I could think "my precioussss" and eat the cake.

When the announced parcels arrived, I knew again what the drugstore parcel had been about. At least three months ago, I had checked a box for the giveaway of a test box with four products while I was on the drugstore website. I had completely forgotten about it as I never win anything, anyway!
What a coincidence that it arrived that day.

Also this week a print arrived that I ordered because it's perfect for me, but I will show you that one in another post.

Now you may say, well, it was your birthday, you must have expected something.
I didn't really. My birthday is not a big thing to me, no celebration, no party, so it was really not just the gifts themselves although I loved them of course, but the surprises that made it extra special and knowing someone thought of me (well, not the drugstore of course).

And who knows, maybe I will be able to finish that gift to myself after all. Wish me luck!

Random Saturday - Piggy banks, part 2

Last week, I posted about the history of the piggy bank and said I would write a second post including some memories of mine, so here I am.

The first money box that I can remember was made from wood. I got it from the bank on World Savings Day.
The World Savings Day or World Thrift Day was established during the 1st International Savings Bank Congress in Milan, a day promoting the idea of saving all over the world.
In some countries it has disappeared completely by now, but in others it is still a tradition on October 31st or, like in Germany, on the last workday before because the 31st is a holiday in some regions. Some banks even have a World Savings Week. Nowadays, the focus of the organizers is on developing countries.
It's not a surprise that Germany still has it, after all we always prided ourselves on being the world champions of saving.
I loved the little gifts we got and even today my tape is still in an (ugly) brown tape holder from that time! Back then, the only option for our little money to go was the savings book. My so-called "youth savings books" in the 70s and early 80s had the appropriate colors and hippie flowers. I wouldn't surprise if I still had them around in a pile of old letters or papers, should I happen to find them, I'll add a picture here.

My money box got broken soon, so I can't show it to you, but I found that exact kind on eBay, in different shapes and with different images, mostly from fairy tales.
While the shape I had is there, the image is not, I'm pretty sure I had Snow White. Who knows, though, maybe it will turn up eventually?
In the bottom it had a metal disk with a keyhole unlike other piggy banks which had - as mentioned in my first post - to be actually broken to get to the money.
Another possibility was having a box which could only be opened at the bank, in the early days bank staff even went to the costumers to open the boxes there.

I still remember that we had a savings cabinet in elementary school. It was smaller than this one in a German pub and stood in a corner of our classroom, probably on a table.

Public domain, picture by Willy Horsch
(via Wikimedia Commons)

I don't remember if bank staff came to the school to open the cabinets, count the money from the little inserts behind the individual slots and add the amount to the "school savings book", but I guess that's how it must have been. If you look at my own book, though, it doesn't seem to have happened very regularly.
I wasn't very good at saving, only once - shortly after my birthday - I had a veritable fortune on my book which I withdrew quickly.
Excuse the look, it's over 50 years old. Also I noticed again that not only my name, but also my address at the time had been filled in incorrectly.

By the way, "Sparefroh", the little guy with a coin for his torso, was an advertising figure which was invented in Stuttgart in 1955 and was obviously still around in the 70s although I can't remember it from anywhere else but my savings book.
He got much more popular in Austria where he is still used today in modernized form.

For those who want to collect money boxes possibilities are endless and it is recommended to restrict yourself to a certain look or material unless your space and financial resources are also endless.
There are the simple piggy banks you have to break - unless you are professionally trained like me at putting a knife through the slot and carefully guiding the coins out -, or those with a key that you or the bank has.
My small size Drumbos (which I wrote about some years ago) would have to be used with a knife.

Collectors also distinguish between "still banks" without mechanics or "mechanical banks" which do something if a coin is thrown in and which are especially sought after in the USA. The first ones were for example made from tin, in the USA also from cast iron.
Hundreds of variations were produced, with music, with counting mechanisms, or with movement.
There are also the vending machines like my Stollwerck "Victoria" (which I wrote about here) which "sold" you chocolate or candy.

My own favorite piggy bank was my safe, though. No idea where it went to, but it probably didn't survive my greedy children's hands trying to get to the Pfennige inside.
As I didn't own any kind of piggy bank at the moment, I treated myself to one for my birthday (yeah, I make the weirdest birthday gifts). The safe from my childhood was grey, but I think I can live with a little color change.
I'm sure my money will be totally safe from burglars now 😉

Sources:

1. World Savings Day and the Piggy Bank. History and curiosity. On: UniCredit website, October 31, 2023
2. Spardosen. Wer den Pfennig nicht ehrt, Spardosen aller Zeiten. On: Kreissparkasse Köln - Geldgeschichte (in German) - also follow the different links at the bottom for more detailed articles and pictures of different kinds of money boxes
3. Jörg Bohn: Spardosen. On: Wirtschaftswundermuseum (in German)

Happy Bratcha Day - erm, Gotcha Day!

I think the title says it all.
It's unbelievable, but four years ago der Dekan entered - well, actually he was carried into Gundel's and my world and changed it forever.
A tiny kitten with a big belly, a huge ego, an urge for destruction, the teeth and claws of a mighty predator, the best snuggles, and plans for flat domination (because of not being allowed outside to take over the world instead).

I already told his story on his birthday in April, so now I'm just going to share a few pictures, old and new in random order.

Happy Gotcha Day, you big ole beloved brat! 💗

Silent movies - Waxworks

I have to confess that I watched today's movie - "Waxworks" from 1924 - in two installments. "Waxworks" is an anthology in three parts with the first part being the longest, so it was easy to take a break after that one.
It seems that my attention span is suffering severely if temperatures in my flat rise above a limit of about 24 °C (75 °F), right now it's more. I know that sounds weird to others, but I have never been a fan of heat.
Anyhow, I have been struggling a bit. It was also the first time I abandoned a chosen movie (The Student of Prague) for not talking to me, pun intended even if it's a bad one, and making me fall asleep more than once.
If the film quality was to blame - the picture was very blurry - the looks of the protagonist - very superficial of me, I know - the heat which plays havoc with my sleeping pattern or something else, I can't tell you. Maybe I should give it another try some other time.

Original release poster,
public domain
via Wikimedia Commons

You know the drill, here's the plot with spoilers.

A young poet is at a carnival where he's supposed to create stories for some waxworks.
The proprietor and his beautiful daughter show him the three wax models - Caliph Haroun Al-Rashid, Czar Ivan the Terrible, and Spring-Heeled Jack (as the censors weren't happy to have him called Jack the Ripper). He points out that the Caliph has lost his arm which immediately gives the writer an idea for the first story in which ...

Emil Jannings as the Caliph, Wilhelm Dieterle as the writer/Assad,
Olga Belajeff as the daughter/Maimune

... the Caliph is on his roof playing a game of chess, well, actually losing a game of chess. His mood is not improved by the smoke coming up from the chimney of the baker Assad and he sends his vizier to bring him Assad's head.
The vizier takes some men, sharpens his sword too, but then he is distracted by Assad's wife Maimune and her beauty, so instead of killing him he goes back to the Caliph to tell him about her.
Meanwhile the jealous Assad and Maimune get into an argument, and to prove that he's a real man, Assad sets out for the palace to steal the Caliph's wishing ring while the Caliph goes to his house to pay beautiful Maimune a visit.
Assad enters the palace and cuts the sleeping Caliph's arm off to get the ring. Really it is a wax model, though, left behind to hide Haroun's escapade of trying to seduce Maimune.
When Assad comes home, Maimune hides the Caliph in the oven. Assad confesses to his crime and is about to be arrested by the bodyguards, but his wife uses the fake wishing ring on the wax arm to bring the Caliph "back to life".
She also "wishes" Assad to become the baker for Haroun who protectingly takes them under his wide coat.

Happy with the story, the writer starts on the next one for Czar Ivan the Terrible.

Conrad Veidt is a great Ivan the Terrible - I'm sure his incredible 
eyes helped with that!

Ivan isn't call the Terrible for nothing. He likes to have his prisoners poisoned and watches them die while the last grains of sand run through an hourglass with their names on it. When the court astrologist warns him that his name could end up on a glass, Ivan has the poisoner killed, but he has written the Czar's name on a huge hourglass before he dies.
The next day Ivan is invited to the wedding of a noble's daughter. Fearing assassins, he changes clothes with the noble and indeed the man is killed.
At the wedding he forces all the guests who are in grief about the bride's father to dance and celebrate. When he finds the bride crying over her father's dead body, he abducts her and the groom.
Back at the Kremlin, he has the groom tortured when the bride refuses to give in to his advances. When she has almost given up, the astrologer comes in with the huge hourglass bearing the Czar's name. With Ivan distracted by the thought of his death, the bride and groom escape.
Ivan, believing that he has been poisoned, has the idea to prevent the last grains of sand falling and so he keeps turning the hourglass over ... and over ... and over ... until the end of his days.

Werner Krauß as Spring Heeled Jack (Jack the Ripper), very spooky!

When starting the last story about Spring Heeled Jack, the writer falls asleep and begins to dream that he and the propietor's daughter are being followed through the carnival by Jack who means to kill them.
Just when they think they have escaped Jack, he catches up with them and stabs the writer.
The proprietor's daughter wakes him up from his nightmare and he finds he has poked himself with his pen. He admits that he had dreamed Jack had taken her away from him and gets a happy ending to his own story when they kiss.

What you will definitely notice first is that "Waxworks" is one of those early German expressionist films.
The cast is impressive with great actors of the time, Emil Jannings, Conrad Veidt, and Werner Krauß, wearing elaborate costumes, and the set built by director Paul Leni (together with Walter Maurischat) enhances each story.

Assad's escape from the palace. Does the set remind you of something?
The strange angles of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari perhaps?

There's the small home of the baker and his wife which looks even smaller with the huge Caliph in it. Actually the couple looks quite small standing next to him, too.
The tall Czar made the Kremlin cellars look even more claustrophobic. Veidt was 6'2 or 6'3 (I found both) and also had that burning look that was perfect for this role. Of the three stories this was my favorite one because of him although Iwan is really not a nice guy.
The third story was the shortest, but impressive. I think we would all be able to relate to a nightmare like this one.
Werner Krauß chasing the writer and his love through the carnival could easily be one of my own (luckily rare) bad dreams. The atmosphere is not only emphasized by the set, but also the double exposure with a ghostly Jack following the lovers.

I've read that this is one of the early horror films, but I can't fully agree to that because the Haroun story which took up half the movie is not horror in my opinion.
Unfortunately tyrants who jump from one mood to the other and act on it without thinking about other people have always been around.

The Ivan story is eerie and frightening ... and unfortunately not that far-fetched if you have a look at history.

So that leaves the six minutes with Jack that would fit the category in my opinion. Had that story been longer, there could have been some fine horror, but it got laughed off quite quickly at the end when the writer woke up.

Originally, four stories had been planned, but the story around highwayman Rinaldo Rinaldini after a novel from 1799 had to be dropped for lack of money. Rather ironic, don't you think, if you know Rinaldini was cheated out of his heritage in the book.

I think it would have been better to have a shorter first and a longer third story, but nevertheless I enjoyed the movie.


Sources:

1. Fritzi Kramer: Waxworks (1924) - A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, February 3, 2013
2. Alex Humphrey: Waxworks [Das Wachsfigurenkabinett] (1924) Review. On: Love Horror, November 6, 2020
3. Graham Fuller: Blu-ray: Waxworks (1924) review. On: theartsdesk.com, November 24, 2020

From my children's book cabinet - Kasperle by Josephine Siebe

I don't know if someone really told me, if I had made it up myself or dreamed it (which would be funny), but at the age of about 5 I believed that if you dream the same thing three times, it comes true.
I have always been a vivid dreamer and in later years often had repetitive dreams, but the particular dream I waited for then just wouldn't come to me.
So I sat down on my bed couch, squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated very hard. What I wanted to come true, you'd like to know? I wanted a living Kasperle sooo bad.
I didn't fall asleep, I didn't dream, I didn't get a living Kasperle, the disappointment was big.
Josephine Siebe and her Kasperle books were to blame for that disappointment.

A linen bound edition of the first volume from 1951

The story of the Kasperle (also Kasperl or Kasper depending on the region) is a long one. It's a puppet (mostly hand puppet) that probably has its origin in Austria. In German speaking countries it has been known since the end of the 18th century.

Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Similar puppets are for example Punch from the UK, Guignol from France or Pulcinella from Italy.
That kind of puppet play was originally not aimed at children and could be quite violent and later also be used for political purposes, for example by the National Socialists.
In the 20s, however, an educational Kasper also emerged trying to teach a younger audience to do the right thing. This is also the kind of puppet theater that still exists today.

As a hobby, a friend of ours had started a puppet theater with a friend of his. After that friend passed away, the ex took his place for occasional shows at a library. Of course that was way before electronic devices of all kinds took over completely.
It was amazing to see the children's reactions which were much like my own when I had seen a puppet play as a kid. I have no idea if that would still work or if the children just get younger and younger because there are still puppet theaters out there, I sometimes see posters up in town.

An edition of the seventh book from 1957
showing the typical Kasperle with a big nose and
wearing colorful clothes and a pointy hat

Now what about the living Kasperle, though?
For several years, Josephine Siebe worked as an editor for a newspaper's women's supplement and wrote articles, reviews and feuilletons including articles about the women's movement.
Between 1900 and 1940, she wrote almost 70 children's books, the best known ones are the seven Kasperle books published between 1921 and 1930. As you can tell from me still reading those in the early 70s, they were quite popular and actually they are still available in print or as ebooks, the German ones are also on the German Projekt Gutenberg-DE.
Siebe's books were illustrated by some of the best known illustrators of the time, in color or black and white.

Kasperle is not wearing his own clothes in this scene as he has left them
behind to be more inconspicuous which doesn't seem to work!

The story begins in a small house in the forest. In that house, a woodcarver, Master Friedolin, lives with his wife Annette and their adoptive daughter Liebetraut. He carves Kasperle puppets and his wife makes clothes for them.
One day, Liebetraut says she wishes the puppets were alive and Master Friedolin tells her that his great-great-great-grandfather had had a living Kasperle. He had met him one night in the forest and took him home, then he started carving dolls after his face instead of the saints and the household items he had made before. After Friedolin's grandfather had died, however, the secret where the Kasperle was got lost.
A litte later, Friedolin looks for something in his cupboards and finds a little split. When he pulls, a little door opens and out comes the lost Kasperle! They find a note with him saying that the ancestor's apprentice had given him a sleeping potion. Now they also understand why a dealer from the town is always trying to buy the old cupboards. He is a descendant of that apprentice and therefore knew of the Kasperle.

After a little tiff, Kasperle runs into the forest and then travels and has adventures, with a farmer, in a castle, in a school, with a gardener - and there he meets Mr. Severin who knows where he has come from. Kasperle is not like Pinocchio who has changed from a doll to a living boy. He comes from a far away island where the Kasperles live, but no one knows where that island is.
In the end, Mr. Severin takes Kasperle back to the forest house, falls in love with Liebetraut and marries her. Kasperle is happy being back, but thinks it might be even better on the island which is his real home.

Over the next few books, Kasperle has many adventures and I loved all of them. He often got into trouble, got locked up and escaped, had enemies and very good friends, came back home, and he even found his island, but left it again in the end because he missed his friends.

I spent some very happy hours with Kasperle as a child and eventually got myself some older editions of all seven books.
When Kasperle has eaten too much or falls down from somewhere he's sure he's going to die, but instead of "ich sterbe", he says "ich stirbse". I loved that word when I was small and still use it sometimes today.
Maybe Kasperle is how I would have liked to be myself. He was completely free and impulsive and definitely no overthinker.

Siebe's books were translated into several languages. I could only find one entry for Kasperle in English, "Kasperle's Adventures" from 1929 and 1939.
Have you ever heard of it or have you ever heard about the "Kasperle" in puppet theater before?


Source:

Nina Preißler: Siebe, Josephine - Leipziger Frauenporträts. On: Website Leipzig City, 2014 (in German)

Random Saturday - Piggy banks, part 1

This post was inspired by another daily thread in my jewelry forum. "Did you have a piggy bank? What did it look like?"
Now doesn't that sound like another great rabbit hole? Because, you know ... I actually had more than one over the years myself. You probably did, too?

Where do piggy banks even come from, though, and why are they called that? After all, not all of them actually look like pigs.

Let's have a look at the history of the savings box, money box, whatever you want to call it.
Would you have thought that they have been around since ancient times?
I found two different informations for the oldest known money box in the world. The first one is on one called a "Thesauros" (or "Naiskoi" according to one source) which is in the shape of a temple and was found in Priene, an ancient Greek town (today on Turkish land), dated to the 2nd century BC.

Money box held at the
Antikensammlung Berlin,
picture taken by Marcus Cyron,
CC BY-SA 3.0
(via Wikimedia Commons)

Another source, however, says that the Iraq Museum in Baghdad had an even older one in their exhibition in 1990 although it's not clear if it still exists now.
It was found in a private residence in Babylon and was dated to the end of the 4th or beginning of the 3rd century BC. It was thrown on a potter's wheel and looked like an amphora with a slit cut in at the side.
Those easy to make money boxes, which were popular around the world and are still made, had to be broken to get to the money ("break the bank"). You can find a picture of it here.

Earthen pots used in Nepal,
picture by Krish Dulal, CC BY-SA 3.0 
(via Wikimedia Commons)

Over time, money boxes have come in all kinds of shapes and materials, but where does the pig come in?
The oldest piggy bank in Germany is from the 13th century (again there are different opinions about it, in this case about it actually being a piggy bank or just a pig sculpture). 
Then there's the information about one from 1576, but it rather looks as if that story had a satirical background and was then passed on as truth.
Pigs have been a symbol for luck and wealth since ancient times. There are different theories about the reasons. In German, we still say someone "hat Schwein" for unexpected luck, literally "has pig". So it makes sense that a pig would be used for amassing that wealth by saving.

Verified piggy banks from the 12th century were found on the island of Java although these are really wild boars.
I wonder if this one from the 14th/15th century broke from age or if it was broken to get the money out ...

Majapahit terracotta piggy bank,
Trowulan, East Java,
picture by Gunkarta, CC BY-SA 3.0
(via Wikimedia Commons)

In Stuttgart, there's a Pig Museum with over 50,000 items which is an interesting mix of history, art, and kitsch.
Yes, I've been there myself before and was very glad they also had a vegetarian option in the restaurant there.
Of course they also have a few piggy banks behind glass.

Where does the term "piggy bank" come from, though? It's often used for savings in general or for money boxes that don't even have the pig shape.
I wish I could tell you, but again there are different theories. Was there really a clay called "pygg" used to make dishes and pots in which Western Europeans collected their money, so eventually potters started to make "pig banks"? 
Was the word "pig" used for earthenware in general?
So how did the pig get to Germany, for example, where the word is "Schwein"? Did the Germans just translate it? What about the alleged first one from the 13th century then? Which was there first, the "Sparschwein" or the "piggy bank"? 
Is it true that German immigrants helped to make the pig shape popular in the US?
Merriam-Webster tells us the word "piggy bank" was first used in 1917, the Oxford English Dictionary gives us 1913.
Will we ever know? Is it even important?

There is so much more to the history of piggy banks that I decided to stop here and write a second post about this in which I will also be sharing some of my own memories which got triggered thanks to this post.
The post can be found here once it's live.


Selected sources:

1. Spardosen. Wer den Pfennig nicht ehrt, Spardosen aller Zeiten. On: Kreissparkasse Köln - Geldgeschichte (in German)
2. Twisted tail: The great piggy bank mystery. On: BBC. StoryWorks
3. David M. Robinson: Some Roman Terra-Cotta Savings-Banks. In: American Journal of Archaeology, 28(1924),3, pp. 239 - 250 (open access)
4. Hans Graeven: Die thönerne Sparbüchse im Altertum. In: Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, 16(1901), pp. 160 - 189 (in German)

Silent movies - The Great Train Robbery

Today I have another short for you. When I started this project, I found a list of recommended silent films. This one was on it and we didn't have a Western yet.
So let's enter the world of the Western movie with "The Great Train Robbery". Kind of, but I'll get to that.

In the early 1900s when movies were still a novelty and mostly had been short glimpses into ordinary life - who could forget the train entering the station or workers leaving a factory, gripping stuff! (I'm not making fun of it, at the time it really was) - a movie 12 minutes long (although the versions on YouTube have different lengths, maybe a matter of speed?) and with a plot was really pretty incredible.

First comes the plot (with spoilers).
The title is a bit of a giveaway.
Two masked men enter a railroad telegraph office and force the operator to stop the train and to order the engineer to take water at this station before knocking him out and tying him up.
The band is hiding behind the water tank and then sneaks onto the train. Two of the bandits enter the express car where the messenger checks the mail. He gets killed and the robbers open the locked treasure box with dynamite.
Meanwhile, the other bandits head to the locomotive. In a fight on the tender, the fireman gets killed and thrown off the train. The engineer is forced to disconnect the locomotive.
The bandits make the passengers leave the coaches and take their valuables. One passenger who tries to escape is shot.
Afterwards, the band escapes in the locomotive. After a few miles they leave the train and go for their horses they had tied to some trees nearby.
The scene cuts back to the telegraph office where the operator is trying to telegraph for help before fainting again. His daughter enters, cuts the ropes, and wakes him up throwing some water at his face.
Next we see people dancing in a dance hall when the operator comes in to tell what has happened. The men get their guns and pursue the bandits.
When they find them, one of the bandits is shot, the other three escape. Feeling safe, they go through the mail bags, but the posse sneak up on them without horses. A fight takes place which costs the lives of the bandits and some of the posse.
The leader of the outlaws takes aim and fires point blank at the audience.

You think I added the picture a second time by mistake? No.
From the Edison Film Catalogue 1904:
"This section of the scene can be used either to
begin the subject or to end it, as the operator may choose."
I don't know how scared some of the viewers might have
been, but I believe it was a cool effect.

For a 12 minute short, this sure has quite the death toll (I think not even Midsomer Murders could keep up with that).
Now why did I say that this is "kind of" a Western?
To us it looks like one, we have horses, cowboys, the setting is right. To people back then, this could well be their ordinary surroundings, though, and the film could have been taken right out of the paper.
Train robberies "emerged shortly after the Civil War" and "became obsolete by the 1930s". The death toll among both robbers and passengers could be high especially if crew or passengers resisted, but if it worked out, the loot could be worth the try. As early robberies still often went unpunished and valuables were transported by train now rather than by stage coach, the idea of a crime you didn't need specialized skills for became quite popular in the USA.
The "Wild West" had also been shown on film before, for example footage of Annie Oakley or Buffalo Bill, but never with a plot, so you could say this kicked off the fascination with Western movies.

I also read that this was the first movie with a narrative and one blogger actually explained why for them it had more narrative than Méliès's Trip to the Moon, but I couldn't agree. Then I found a quote from a TCM article. The link didn't work anymore, but the quote says the movie "became the first influential narrative film in which the editing was imaginative and contributed to the narrative".
I could live with that.

The film used cross-cutting, that means cutting between two scenes happening simultaneously, in this case between the bandits and the posse.
While there were sets which looked like a stage, a lot of the plot takes place outside which gives the movie a more real look, and again, the plot was something people could relate to, either because they lived there or through newspaper articles.
It is a little funny to see the "clock" on the wall here, but at the same time you see a train pass by the big window. Here it's a matte shot that gives the scene reality.

Or take this scene. You don't only have the "special effect" of the explosion, but in the back you also see through the open wagon door that the train is speeding by some trees, also a matte shot.

The movie was a huge success. Imagine what it must felt like to the audience.
It was fast-paced, it showed violence and justice, and there was even a bit of comic relief when a man comes into the dance hall and the men shoot as his feet to make him dance (talk cowboy stereotype, but it seems to have actually happened). It's short, it has nothing to do with the rest of the movie, but we have scenes like that even today sometimes. Anything to entertain the audience.

To us, some of it seems funny today, such as the obvious dummy the bandit is throwing off the train. I didn't even mind the wire on the bat in Dracula almost 30 years later, though. Who knows, had it been a Keaton movie, they might have thrown a stuntman off.
I was impressed by the sheer amount of passengers leaving the train. I admit it made me think of a clown car for a bit, but then memories of my commute came to me and suddenly the number of passengers seemed totally normal to me.
And the theatrical acting? Loved it. If you can't scream when you're dying, you should at least be allowed to die dramatically. The more silent movies I watch, the more I'm making my peace with wringing hands and rolling eyes.

Believe it or not, this actor - Gilbert M. Anderson - is also one of the bandits
and the dancing tenderfoot in the dance hall scene,
he later became a real Western star as "Broncho Billy".

If you like Western movies, you should give this one a chance.
There are also versions in which some of the dresses or effects are hand painted, but the one I watched isn't, so I can't tell you if that enhances the experience.

This film also inspired another one by the same director, Edwin S. Porter, by the way.
You can watch "The Little Train Robbery" from 1905, which shows a gang of kids rob a miniature train for the loot of candy, here. I loved the ending. Not everyone was so happy with this short, though, because they thought it would make children become criminals!


Selected sources:

1. Fritzi Kramer: The Great Train Robbery (1903) A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, November 3, 2013
2. Jeff Arnold: The Great Train Robbery (Edison, 1903). On: Jeff Arnold's West, March 8, 2021
3. Chris Scott Edwards: The Great Train Robbery (1903). On: Silent Volume, July 12, 2009
4. The Fascinating Story of 1903's Biggest Movie. On the YouTube channel "Toni's Film Club"
5. Rick Ruddell and Scott Decker: Train Robbery: A Retrospective Look at an Obsolete Crime. In: Criminal Justice Review, 42(2017),4, pp. 333 - 348 (closed access)

Nostalgia - "Glanzbilder"

Last Saturday I wrote about the tradition of the "Poesiealbum". I mentioned "Glanzbilder" (literally "glossy pictures", in English they are called "scraps" or "die cuts") and that we had used some in a gift for a retiring colleague.
What I hadn't mentioned was that I might have bought just a little bit more than we needed, mostly because we wanted some variety and all went overboard, overcome with memories.
Let's talk about "Glanzbilder".

The history of scraps began in the 19th century. At first, they were black and white and had to be cut out by hand.
The invention of color printing in the form of chromolithography in 1837 allowed printing ephemera in high numbers, in good quality and at low cost. Among those ephemera were series of collectible pictures which came with different products for advertisement, could be collected in special albums and were also traded (which is of course still popular today although the pictures changed from being just advertisement articles to stand-alone products over time).

Around 1860, the German company Hagelberg started to print, emboss and die cut sheets with several pictures connected by small strips of paper.
In English, they are called scrap reliefs.
Until 1900, Berlin was the heartland of the scrap production, but there were also many manufacturers in other countries although they often didn't make scraps exclusively.
Scraps were used in scrapbooking, I have to admit I never knew where the name came from because it's not something I have ever done myself. In Germany, but also in other German or Dutch speaking countries, they were also used for "Poesiealben".

Subjects were often sentimental and romantic, angels, kittens, puppies, birds, flowers, butterflies, holiday themes, children, and much more.
They were colorful, embossed for more depth, and of course there were those with glitter which we loved best, but which were also more expensive.

Scraps are not self-adhesive like stickers, by the way. They had to be glued into an album.
There was also a different way, though, as I found out thanks to a post by a Swedish blogger. She shared scrap albums with sticky leaves you could put your scraps on and then protect with a plastic cover (there's a video showing that).
Scraps are still popular today, thanks to a wave of nostalgia, even if it's a bit kitschy. There are only two big companies left, one in Germany which actually only started in 1948 and markets them worldwide, one in England which also makes paper masks and vintage-inspired cards.
They may not turn up in the old-fashioned poetry album anymore, but they are still collected and used in crafts such as scrapbooking, collages, decoupage or card-making.

Interesting is also that the co-owner of the German company has gone (still goes?) to rest homes to set up small exhibitions and talk about scraps.
The stories and the visual impact are supposed to awaken memories in people and make them think about positive experiences in their lives.

I gave some of my pictures away which will probably find their way into friendship books, the successors of the poetry album, but I also kept some although I have no idea yet what I'm going to do with them.
Actually I thought about starting another poetry album, but that would mean having to send the album around as most of my friends don't live in my town and for me that sounds like too much of a hassle for them.
So I guess I'm just going to look at them every, now and then ... and remind myself that I still haven't found my Poesiealbum"! 😆

Sources (Englisch and German):

1. Die Geschichte der Glanzbilder-Produktion. On: Ernst Freihoff - Glanzbilder - Reliefs / Glanzbilder Historie (in German)
2. Scrap Reliefs Collection. On: Mamelok Papercraft3. Peter Kolakowski: Glanzbilder. On: DW (Deutsche Welle), November 19, 2009 (in German)
4. Glanzbilder - heile Welt auf Papier gebannt. In: Mindener Tageblatt, December 22, 2012 (via Wayback Machine, in German)
5. Hanna Andersson: Collectible vintage Scrap die-cuts | Glanzbilder or Bokmärken. On: Studio iHanna, July 27, 2020 (with a video)
6. Scrapbooking and the origin of scrap relief. On: Fantastik, January 11, 2024