Live HistoricSee what matters.

Film · Edison · 1903

Pass it on

Life of an American Fireman

63Watch it awake.

Worth a reel for the rescue, and don't call the cutting a settled first.

The review

Textbooks kept Porter's fire picture, which is more fuss than a reel usually gets. A fireman dreams of a danger at home, then a real alarm, then a rescue from a burning room. A house can watch it. The rescue is the point, and I am glad the job is the story.

Historians argue the order of the shots, so the cutting is not a prize I can award. There is no audited gross either. We can watch a fireman answer an alarm and leave that argument to somebody who is not trying to get the kids down.

Journal

Keep Life of an American Fireman in the record.

No house has filed a sentence for this yet.

Live Historic number 63. Yours can differ.

The glance

Piety is the thin one.

Can conscience actually stop someone, or is reverence only in the shot so it can be mocked?

This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.

Consider this

12 Angry Men

75 instead of 63

12 Angry Men is still a drama film, and it scores 75 instead of 63. What you gain is truth: They will not accept a story that does not fit.

The eight

8
Industry
A fireman answers a real alarm; the rescue is the point.
6
Household
He dreams of a danger at home before the real alarm comes.
5
Piety
The dream of home does not keep him from answering the alarm.
7
Courage
The rescue is from a burning room, which is the risk that matters.
7
Republic
A fire alarm is the town calling, and the fireman goes.
6
Temperance
The reel ends on a rescue, not on a tease for another fire.
5
Truth
Historians argue the shot order; the cutting is not a settled first.
6
Stewardship
Textbooks kept the fire picture; there is no audited gross to cite.

Where to watch

Finding the page.

Live Historic · Life of an American Fireman · 63IMDb

Live HistoricSee what matters.

Film · Prime Video · 2005

Pass it on

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

63Watch it awake.

The punishments are the old book. The factory is colder than the 1971 film. Read it that way.

The review

Charlie is still the child who has a family and almost nothing else, and the ticket is still a test the other children fail in public. Willy is stranger here, and the flashbacks make his oddness a wound rather than a mystery. That is a choice. It explains him. It also risks teaching that genius is a loneliness the world should indulge. The book did not ask for that much sympathy.

Watch it if the house already knows the story and can say which child is which. The gum, the television, the greed, the spoiled demanding: those four are the lesson, and they are still true. Do not come away wishing to live in the factory. Come away glad Charlie had a grandfather who would go with him and a family to bring the prize home to.