. . . as used in the title of this 1910 short from the Edison Manufacturing Company, NEW YORK OF TODAY, which probably already constituted a misnomer less than 24 hours after this 7 minute, 35.05-second short was released to the public. As of this writing, virtually EVERYONE pictured in this film IS DEAD, most forgotten to history, such as the cast and crew of this flick. Many of the trees have expired, and the horses seen here and there are long gone. Probably the majority of the buildings are gone, but you'd have to be a person familiar with the nooks and crannies of New York City to know that for sure. Any company in its right mind would title this differently, such as NEW YORK: TOURIST MAGNET or NEW YORK: MOST MODERN CITY IN THE WORLD or THINGS ARE ALWAYS CHANGING IN NEW YORK CITY. But notorious firm believers in false advertising, the Edison folks foisted a patent (to use their favorite term) lie on the world citizenry, which would be totally illegal under today's laws protecting American consumers. (Note that NBC films a NEW version of the "TODAY SHOW" daily!)

In its time, this feature was filmed in large part as an invitation for tourists, especially from overseas, to visit New York. But the footage is interesting now for different reasons, as a portrait of what New York City looked like in 1910, and as an example of the development of early cinema techniques and methods.There isn't really a story, although the various sequences are tied together by following one particular couple as they tour the city in a sight-seeing car. Most of the time, though, they are unobtrusive, allowing the sights themselves to take center stage. The locations range from Grant's Tomb to Times Square to Luna Park to the then-renowned Flatiron Building. It packs quite a bit into only seven minutes or so of running time, making it an interesting historical record of the city as it was.It's also interesting for a different reason, in that a good many of the very same locations had been filmed in earlier Edison features (as well as movies by other studios), over the preceding ten years or so. Several of these are included together in Kino's recent release of Edison films, and it makes for some interesting comparisons. Naturally, there had been considerable advances in technique from the time of some of the earlier features, while at other times the earlier and later footage are surprisingly similar.The camera movement is the most noticeable aspect of the technique, with the 1910 footage containing a number of smoothly done, effective pans. Then also, in a couple of scenes the camera moves upward to show the height of a skyscraper. These shots are not nearly as smooth as the horizontal pans, but in one of them there is an interesting (if possibly unintentional) effect, as the building outline fades away into fog or low-lying clouds.The cast and crew of this movie are apparently no longer known, and it would be interesting to know whether it included anyone who worked on the earlier Edison movies with the same settings. But in any case, the historical details and the various points of comparison make this a pretty interesting movie to watch today from a historical perspective.