The first film of 1903 that shocked me by its violence was Horrible fin d’un concierge. In this film, someone slams a door in someone else’s face and a large blood stain remains on the door. The second shock came when viewing Le Mannequin vivant, in which a woman is roughly beaten up; through a substitution splice the actress is exchanged for a doll, which is badly maltreated, and then converts back into the real woman. The trick transformation allows heavier blows and misogyny in its most violent form. In other films such as Desperate Poaching Affray, policemen are shot frivolously by poachers, and The Great Train Robbery features several lethal shots and the iconic ending, in which gun is pointed and fired at the audience. Pathé offers in its sales catalogue of 1903 a series now lost of Exécutions capitales in four different countries, as if there was an educational value in learning about how people are put to death around the world. Has cinema in 1903 lost the innocence of its beginnings? But enough of cultural pessimism; in early comedy, violent brawls and outbursts of destructiveness are important means to make the audience laugh, and the suffering of others forces the biggest laughs. That’s just the way we humans are. Violence seems to be an immanent part of cinema since 1903 and a continued subject of debate, raising the age-old question: do violent films motivate people to commit violent acts?

Karl Wratschko