1901: FIRE!

Director:  James Williamson
Length:  4:45 minutes

   

   Before Ladder 49, before Backdraft, there was.... “Fire!”, James Williamson’s inspirational, tear-jerking, and patriotic salute to Our Brave Men And Women In The United States Fire Department... except I think it might have still just been fire brigades back then? Also I think this movie's British?  In either case, it’s a firefighter movie.

   The movie begins with a policeman finding that a building is on fire, and running to inform the local fire brigade.  The rest of the movie shows the firemen hooking their horses to their cars, getting to the house, putting out the fire and rescuing the three people inside.  It is a rather straightforward procedural, but is fairly interesting as a minidocumentary on how fire departments operated in those days;  I was joking in my first paragraph, of course—this was before the days when firemen on film rescued cats from trees.  It is of interest that the policeman who notices the fire literally runs-- on foot-- to the fire department, and that the cart containing the extendable ladder isn’t even horsedrawn, but pushed by manpower to the scene of the fire.  One wonders how long it usually took for the brigades to get to the fire in those days.  There’s also a nice scene of the two horsedrawn carts galloping down the street toward the camera on their way to the fire, which is kind of exciting.

   This movie isn’t color-tinted, (at least none of the versions I found were), but the frame isn’t as cluttered as in “Joan of Arc” so I was never confused by what was going on.  Méliès shot his movies on a set, whereas “Fire!” is filmed on-location outdoors: more open, less cramped.  The framing is more well-done, and the scenes flow into a logical progression, compared to the last film I watched.  They had the advantage that they were telling a simpler story, but I prefer to think that it was cinematography improving over time.

   The biggest problem with the movie is that, the firemen first rescue a person from the top floor by carrying them down on the ladder.  They then retract the ladder, and rescue the other person on the same floor by having him jump on a trampoline held by all of the firemen.  Maybe we are supposed to assume they didn’t know about the second person when they were withdrawing the ladder, but I think the director just wanted to show all of the gizmos the fire brigade had.