This short documentary has been shot weeks before the terrible quake! And after it, others shot the same path: you can find on the web edit movies with the 2 frames side by side to compare before / after the quake! they say they are synchronized but i doubt it: street lamps are after the quake! What is striking is that we barely see the Ferry building on the end of the street: dust, fog or bad quality, i can't say? Also after the quake, there is much more people outside on the street... But this trip movie has a lot of legends: shot 6 days before, Frisco was full of cars while i understand it was much earlier and in fact there is much less cars that it seems because the cars keep circling around the camera. At last, it's pity: i started my coast to cast american trip here but i don't think i did this travel because my cable car was in a downhill road while here it's completely flat...

There is really no better way to summarize this little movie other than by what the title says: "A Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire". Of course you could add that it is San Francisco and that this film was made shortly before the disastrous earthquake hit the Californian city. This movie had its 110th anniversary already a couple weeks ago and as such it is obviously a black-and-white silent film. City documentaries were a thing back then and I find it somewhat funny how people sometimes stop and look at the camera. Other than that, it is pretty much what you would expect life to look like shortly before the outbreak of World War I. An okay movie from the documentary perspective, but really only worth checking out for silent film enthusiasts. The lack of a plot may bore everybody else.

From the front of a cable car, a motion picture camera records a trip down Market Street, San Francisco, California, from a point between 8th & 9th Streets, Eastward to the cable car turnaround at the Ferry Building.Maybe it was cheating, but I watched this with sound superimposed on top of the picture. It made it more entertaining, to be sure. But regardless, this is an incredible film. We know some of it was staged, but it still shows a busy city street in 1906. The clothes, the horses, the beards... this is a priceless document of history.Apparently there is some debate on exactly when the film was made, but it does seem to be not long before the earthquake. Maybe a week, maybe more. But the exact date does not change the fact it captured San Francisco in its prime.

The movie is twelve minutes long and it's made by the Miles Brothers, a pioneer film company that made some thirty movies between 1903 - 1907.This movie is their best known, and for good: it's a little gem. They installed their camera on a cable car that operated on Market Street, the Fifth Avenue of San Francisco (or their Champs Élysées, if you prefer). And so, set on the car, the camera filmed the view of the street, as they were slowly going down to the Ferry Building.Watching this movie is like traveling on a time capsule that brings us in a jiffy over hundred years ago. The impression is incredible, we fall under a charm. It is the Market Street in San Francisco, everything is there in place, something doesn't fit. There is much less traffic, but it's so chaotic! Cable cars coming from the other side, buggies, carts with their horses, some kind of trolley buses crossing the street every now and then, cars, bicycles, and above all pedestrians, circulating in all directions, crossing the street just in front of the vehicles, running in front of the street car having the camera and shaking their hands with a big smile, just to be caught in the movie, to remain on the screen for eternity. It's a formidable impression of chaos, of joy, of nice irresponsibility, it's La Belle Époque American style. Or rather it's the beginning of big urban life, that particular moment when people just enjoy the novelties: the big city, the industrialization, the cars, the filming. This moment can actually take a couple of years, then the reality becomes the king. But that moment is wonderful. It's a moment of enthusiasm, it is superbly caught by this movie. Watching it calls in mind the mastership of Dziga Vertov, The Man with a Camera. The movie of the Miles Brothers is a lesson of sociology.The movie was long considered to have been made in September 1905. Actually it was made in the spring of 2006, just days before the big earthquake and fire that hit San Francisco, and many of the enthusiast people appearing in the movie would die very soon after the filming.It happened that the movie was sent by train to New York in the night before the earthquake. The following day the studio of Miles Brothers was destroyed by the cataclysm.And the name this movie remained known as A Trip Down Market Street Before the Fire.