Jack and the Beanstalk (1902) *** (out of 4) Nice version of the famous story from Edison with direction by Edwin S. Porter who was close to making his landmark film THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY. The story is about as well-known as you can get but young Jack (Thomas White) trades his cow for some magic beans, which end up growing high into the sky. He ends up climbing up where he encounters the bad guy who he must destroy. If you're looking for anything ground-breaking then you're not going to find it here. I'm sure many people will look at this 1902 film and see it as hokey but it's doubtful these people would be overly interested in the history of film. Those who are interested will find this to be a pretty interesting version of the classic story. Porter does a very good job at telling the story, although without any title cards they're certainly expecting you to already know the story. I really loved the visual look of the film including the special effects of the beanstalk growing. The "vine" used for the stalk was even attempted to look realistic, which wasn't always the case in this early films. The cow in the story is a man in the outfit, a common practice for the day and I can't help but feel this adds a bit of surrealism today.

The Edison Company's "Jack and the Beanstalk" is another example of Georges Méliès's deep and widespread influence throughout the world of early cinema, but it's also remarkably innovative in itself for its time. Méliès largely introduced the story film to cinema with his adaptations of fairy tales, including "Cinderella" (1899), "Bluebeard" (1901), "Little Red Riding Hood" (1901) and other Féeries (fairy films). These films added narrative and new filmic storytelling devices to the editing and camera effects he had founded in his trick film attractions. For "Jack and the Beanstalk", Edwin S. Porter with George S. Fleming inserted an Anglo fairytale instead of the Charles Perrault stories used by Méliès, but otherwise almost exclusively imitate the style and techniques found in Méliès's Féeries. In England, Robert W. Paul and Walter R. Booth had already done essentially the same sort of Anglicization of Méliès with their film "The Magic Sword" (1901).One of the outcomes of this imitation is that the Edison Company produced what was probably the most advanced narrative film made in America as of then; certainly no other US film from before it that I've seen or heard of quite compares. Albeit, America at this time was lagging behind France and Britain in the development of the story film; and, as historian Charles Musser has pointed out ("Before the Nickelodeon"), for a few months between 1901 and 1902, Edison legally monopolized the production of motion pictures in the states. With 10 scenes (or tableaux) and 625 feet of film, running over 10 minutes, "Jack and the Beanstalk" is comparable in length to Méliès's early Féeries while being far ahead of any motion picture previously produced in the US.Technically, the use of dissolves as a transition between scenes and the substitution splices (stop-substitutions) and superimposition trick effects are all borrowed from Méliès. The superimposed vision/dream scene-within-a-scene conjured by the fairy in the fourth and seventh tableaux were based on similar scenes in Méliès's "Cinderella", "Bluebeard" and other films; notably, George Albert Smith, in England, was also an early pioneer of multiple-exposure photography and created scenes-within-scenes in his films as early as 1898, such as in "Santa Claus". Moreover, the interpolation of a fairy into the "Jack and Beanstalk" tale is straight from Méliès's Féeries, which generally feature a fairy godmother who manipulates the narrative and guides the hero—sometimes by projecting visions, serving as the filmmaker's on-screen surrogate by directing such films-within-the-film. The stagy, painted decors; the sudden, irrelevant appearance of dancing girls; and the theatrical final tableau pose were all classic Méliès trademarks, too.Additionally, the story seems to use Joseph Jacobs's non-moralizing version of the fairytale, so Jack simply intrudes on the giant's home, engages his wife against him, steals his wealth and kills him out of greed. Looking back at such an amoral narrative is rather refreshing, at least nowadays, when a moral seems to be incumbent upon most stories. The Edison Company catalogue, however—which may have served as a guide to live lecturers who would add further description for audiences back then, as was common practice—gives the Benjamin Tabart moral treatment by making the Giant the villain.Regardless of the demonstrative overriding influence of Méliès on "Jack and the Beanstalk", it remains a significant production for the time and place it was made. It's a mostly self-contained narrative and is more complex than were most films before it: linking scenes and achieving continuity of action across shots and between exteriors and interiors and, at least, having some production values. These early story films were an important advance; they claimed editorial control for producers and away from exhibitors, who had afore arranged the single shot-scene films into programs. From here, Porter made such other early story films as "Life of an American Fireman" and "The Great Train Robbery" (both 1903).

This movie is great. Not only does it show the lengths to which narrative had increased at the time (and Edwin S. Porter's developing skill in creating such narratives), but it's actually a pretty good adaptation of a well known tale if I may say so myself.Early films often used adaptation as a way of telling a familiar story so that people would understand what's going on with aid of memory along with the general narrative structure. Since I have no idea how this film was regarded back then, I can't really say whether it was effective to that audience or not, but I think today, with our familiarity with cinematic devices, we don't need the help. This movie stands alone pretty well on its own.It's also very magical, which I enjoy. I love these early fantasy films like La Voyage dans la Lune and Jack and the Beanstalk. It seems fantasy film-making slowed down as film developed, mostly kept to science fiction, and only recently with CGI has been growing again.--PolarisDiB

I'm writing a book about "folding" in film, a situation which in its simplest form is seen as a movie within a movie.This is the earliest example I know. The movie itself is about 12 minutes long. There are no dialog cards because presumably all viewers would know the story in detail already. Modern audiences will find the presentation pretty hokey. But there are two episodes within this that have an interesting effect. There is a fairy godmother which to my knowledge is not in the original story. She is invented just for the movie. She manipulates events somewhat. Among her interventions are the creation of visions for our hero.The first time is in a dream, and the second in "real life" (or perhaps a dream). Both illustrate what is to come. These are presented in the movie as a movie that the fairy "projects" onto the background. At the end she appears again to merge the two worlds. Ted's law of abstraction holds even in this early example: the distance between our world and the world of the movie is the same as that between the movie and the world of the movie within.Ted's Evaluation -- 4 of 3: Every cineliterate person should experience this.